Hysterical Italian Media Rant about ‘The Savona Government’

FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Hysterical Italian Media Rant about ‘The Savona Government’

Oct. 16, 2018 (EIRNS)—Italian European Affairs Minister Paolo Savona’s “one-man show” in the Parliament on Oct. 11, with his strong reference to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has shown who is in command in Rome and shaken up the established media in Italy. For example, the Huffington Post Italia headlined its coverage,

“The Savona Government. He Puts the DEF [budget proposal] under His Name, as the Real Economy Minister. ‘The Future Will Be Better. I Sleep Nights.’ He is the one who responds in the Chamber of Deputies, greeted by a standing ovation. Evoking Roosevelt’s New Deal, treating with irony the technocrats and Juncker’s ‘I drink water.’ ”

(EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has a known drinking problem.)

The source of the hysteria is the fact that Savona—standing in for Finance Minister Giovanni Tria, who was attending the IMF meeting in Bali—addressed the Chamber of Deputies on Oct. 11 to defend the proposed budget, which includes a deficit figure that violates EU guidelines, and argued to repeat the success of Roosevelt’s New Deal. He observed that FDR

“put together the industrialized part of the northern United States with the agricultural part ... and he succeeded. Therefore, it is my belief that the experiment we are conducting in this moment is really a large effort of national unity, of coincidence between the interests of the advanced and the backward, economically speaking, parts of the country.”

He acknowledged that the government budget Document on Economy and Finance (DEF) is ambitious, just as Roosevelt’s New Deal was. The DEF aims at

“responding to the increase of poverty since the crisis.... We all agree that the country needs investments. Therefore, let us start to build a New Deal.... But the government program is very cautious, because we are aware that we must implement those reforms that Roosevelt started. Roosevelt made a substantial reform in the financial sector, on competition, on industrial relations.”