Italy's horse of a different color

  I have a dream Each year, on New Year's Eve, it is customary that the President of the Italian Republic appears on Television to give a speech. For as long as I remember, these have ranged from gooey to annoying to downright infuriating, but hey! It's the night of dreams, in a sad year, so let me insert some fancy parts.... That I am safe in thinking I will NEVER hear. “ Over the past decade, and well before last elections and the nomination of Conte as Prime Minister, the use of Confidence votes to enact legislation has exploded. So, as custodian of the Constitution, I want to say this to my fellow citizens: from now on, every government will customarily have a strictly limited number of Confidence votes: One when it is confirmed, then one per year on matters OTHER than its continued existence. I won't sign any other law coming off over and above those numbers.” “ As much as the Recovery Fund will provide additional resources, it's all coming from additional...

  The bitter sea I am sailing on, with all of you     This is Christmas, so it should be a time to spend with the family in peace. Yet it has been rightly pointed out that I have an increasing tendency to behave as a party pooper. The specific occasion has been the unveiling of the new marvel at Pompei, a food joint marvellously painted 1 . I barely raised my head before saying "Well, it figures, Franceschini, the Culture minister,  is running for the Quirinale so he must be seen at Christmas with some positive news flow. no one would think it's chance, it takes ages to restore frescoes to that level of beauty." That earned me a scolding from wifey, who said that there was need for good news and that was one; of course, we can both be right at the same time in this instance. But my job involves some measure of if not divination, at least of throwing away all illusions hiding complex realities. So, I had a bit of internal searching and absolved myself, as we ...

  This interesting @derspiegel article 1 (h/t @michaelxpettis ) depicts one of the possible futures, but like the porridge in the Three Bears tale, one is hot, one is cold, and one is just right. I think that while the  German Chancellery wishes for a "hot" porridge (as in "hot car") this article depicts a possible "just right" scenario: a Biden presidency that in a similar guise of Obama's "thank you for not being George Bush" Nobel, is not #Trump . But there is a "but." The main obstacle is lo and behold, "money", and  this is not caused by the points of contention, but by the policy initiatives where their hearts beat most together: climate, International policy, economics. Applying the #Paris agreement standards or worse would be atrociously damaging to the private sector in the US, on top of the brakes applied by the liberal agenda of the more radical side of the Party. Talks of 15$ federal minimum wage, more ...

  There has been a modicum of brouhaha in Italy about an interesting bit of info coming out of an European Research Council Report, available here : Namely, Italy has received most of the Grants by number, Yay! Only, it didn't. For a country with limited investment and a smaller population than Germany, 60 mln vs 83 mln, Italy has done an incredible job....abroad. Here's the missing part: Italy ranks first by Researcher's nationality, and 8 th , by a country mile, as hosting nation. Yep, we will scale up one since probably next year the UK will drop off the list.... but I don't know and I don't care about how much Italy will drop due to some of its researchers being UK based.   I DO have a conflict of interest talking about “Brain Drain” since I happily shipped off my daughter abroad for her Master, fully expecting her to never come back to live here. She always has been a “citizen of the World”, chafing at the stifling atmosphere surrounding her. It's als...