And this is not his first tilt at the ingrained order in Italia.
Italians must continue to back this bloke or slide back into a dark future.

You'd be surprised how many in our Milan office still speak highly of Berlusconi.
I think for all the other stuff, he actually brought stability and leadership to Italy.
From a political sense he's not a bad role to look at.

Yes, he was self-made and the other sex stuff doesn't matter a jot.
But he really let Italy languish in the mire of bureaucratic and almost medieval systems of govt & business while he concentrated on whatever he had to do to stay in power.
I think the present guy has a fresh outlook and may break through a lot of the rubbish.

Yesterday I watched a doco made in 2012 called "Girlfriend in a Coma". The "girlfriend" of the title is Italy and the doco, co-written & narrated by the former Editor-in_Chief of the Economist, is essentially a long look back at Italy's decline since the 1960s.
I have to say it's changed my view of Berlusconi from what I said above. For instance, there seems little doubt that far from being a self-made man, his wealth has originally been sourced by one of the three mafia organisations.
His association with sex is also less a personal issue than I had thought. In fact, this long doco spends some time in showing how Italian TV has become a vehicle for the sexualisation of women and little else during the past 20 years.
The various statistics presented on a whole range of issues document Italy's decline, not only economically but socially and politically. I can't remember them, I didn't pause it to write them down, but I could see they were well sourced - OECD, UN etc.
One I remember though was that Italy's debt position had actually become worse than that of Greece.
Another was as follows: in the period 1870-1979, 29 million Italians emigrated and they were mainly the poor; in the last 10 years, 1 million had emigrated and they were mostly graduates and mainly young.

It's not entirely a Berlusconi story though. It goes into a lot of background on the mafia groups, on the corruption in politics, on the murders & crime etc going back to the 1960s.

There is some optimism at the end of the program though.
A lot of the bright young Italians living abroad were interviewed and they were all hoping for and looking forward to being able to return home if the society could be turned around.
And quite a few CEOs, such as of Fiat and Ferraro, and leading intellectuals & political figures were also interviewed and expressed optimism that Italy was ready to change.

If you can get hold of the program, it's worth seeing. It ran on SBS.

The thing about the Italian experience of the last 50 years is that there is a lesson in it for all western economies and societies:
- the corruption & disaffection with politics
- the reckless growth of public debt
- the nepotism & favouritism in all walks of life
- the failure of the law, order & justice system

bogarde73 wrote on Aug 10^th, 2014 at 2:49pm:




ahhhh but their shoes bogy... their shoes....I bought 3 pairs when in Naples. many years ago..nothing like what we can buy here...they were just sublime..

Italy Slips Back Into Recession in Second Quarter

Disappointing Growth Data Add Pressure on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi

ROME—Italy has slipped into its third recession since 2008, data showed Wednesday, in an unexpected setback that threatens to restrain the broader euro zone's fitful recovery.

The weak Italian data surprised economists, many of whom had forecast a return to slight growth. Coupled with fears that the Ukraine conflict might worsen, the figures contributed to a slide in European financial markets on Wednesday.



http://online.wsj.com/articles/italy-slips-back-into-recession-in-second-quarter...
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Leader?

Leader in what?

As for those "Economists", most haven't a clue, But even those who do, they seem to have problems with telling the truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth!