Italy's horse of a different color

  “More soup” Why Europe cannot stand innovation The EU is undergoing one of its periodical "belly button watching" periods, where it laments the lack of technological giants on the continent while the word “giant” fits well with the continent bias toward helping big companies, this is not the end result of a cruelly rational thinking process on the contrary, these periodical rites belay a lack of basic understanding of innovation processes my opinion is that no matter what the public utterances are, the current situation not conducive to any progress is in fact a rational response to the constraints within which the EU public beast has to operate, both in static and dynamic terms. Europe has just undergone one of its periodic bouts of “we must promote an industrial policy !” While this is a much needed distraction from the blooper reel that is the EU's foreignpolicy , the most recent utterances fell on me when I was in my most producti...

  A message in a bottle from an European I was relieved to see the US election results, but the next two years are crucial for Western society in more ways that the average US voter thinks.And the two people partaking in the discussion that drove me to write this, Joe Rogan and Marc Andreessen, are far above average. I was listening to Marc Andreessen interviewed by Joe Rogan on his podcast, and while I can see why Andreessen was relieved by the US election results, from where I sit (Italy) I can only say “one cheer and a half”. They were discussing the prevalence of government and/or government funded censorship under the Biden administration and even before that, but I think they were both missing something. And for that “something”, I can contribute my life experience from the wrong side of the Atlantic pond. US citizens are aware there is indeed a Europe because that's where France is (and the Swiss Alps), where they can go to visit Italy, correctly expecting to b...

 The little coin that could     The concept that the Euro as a single currency has been THE problem that doomed Italy to decades of stagnation might be an attractive concept, but my opinion is that this is a typical case of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” .    We're approaching August, and in late August 1988 I started working in a fund management company in Italy. So I am approaching 35 years in the business. Since I immediately engaged in foreign investment for an Italian fund, I was acutely aware of the currency risks involved in that part of the business. Yes, for my position devaluations were a sort of a bonus ball (all positions held abruptly rose in domestic currency terms), but having lived through that period and the whole life of the Euro currency so far, I hold opinions which are different from mainstream. So when I saw this post on X by Michael Arouet , I felt compelled to shove my oar in:   Notice that the first sentence is factual (d...