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| Europe |
| "Italian Prussian" Monti enters political storm |
| 2011-11-14 |
| Mario Monti, the economist who will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi, brings credentials earned in a decade of battles as a European Commissioner from the 1990s. Monti made his name as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on U.S. corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft, blocking GE's planned merger with rival Honeywell and imposing a record 497 million euro ($683 million) antitrust fine on the software giant. His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills added to his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures made him one of the most highly regarded officials the Commission has seen. "He didn't have a very Italian way of going about things," recalls one former ambassador, who worked with Monti in Brussels and remembers him as a hard but reliable negotiating partner. "His nickname in those days was 'The Italian Prussian'". He was nominated by Berlusconi as internal markets commissioner in 1994, taking over the competition portfolio in 1999 where he served for five years. Named last week as Senator for Life by President Giorgio Napolitano, Monti, 68, is expected to appoint a small cabinet made up largely of technical specialists to steer Italy through a crisis that has brought it to the brink of financial disaster. A similar technocrat government under former Bank of Italy official Lamberto Dini passed important reforms in 1995 and the hope of many outside Italy is that Monti can do the same. A convinced free marketeer with close connections to the European and global policy-making elite, Monti has always backed a more closely integrated euro zone and has written a series of articles in recent months lambasting the Berlusconi government's policy failures. He is chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, a body that brings together the power elites of the United States, Europe and Japan and is also a member of the secretive Bilderberg Group of business leaders and other "leading citizens". |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #4 Italian Prussian Now there's an oxymoron. Besides, "Senator for Life"? WTF kind of third-world joint are we dealing with here? |
| Posted by: Spot 2011-11-14 07:58 |
| #3 Trilateralists and Bilderbergers probably rate at about the same intellectual level as the anarchists holding up the banner that said, "Abolish Capitalism and Replace It With Something Good!" Despite ivory tower credentials, they have no clue as to how business works. Instead they rely on theory and computer models made by equally clueless people. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-11-14 07:44 |
| #2 cellars is what my idiotic phone changed fellate into. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2011-11-14 07:26 |
| #1 I'm surprised the author of that nonsense can write and cellars at the same time. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2011-11-14 07:25 |