Italy's horse of a different color

  As Good as it gets Why the global political machine seems to be running on fumes [ Lady Receptionist] “How do you write women so well?” [Melvin turns toward the receptionist] “I think of a man, and take away reason and accountability.” From the movie “As good as it gets” With Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr. The Recent period in history has been characterized by an accelerating rate of intervention both by all kinds of political authorities, be they supranational organizations, governments and  Central Banks in order to jog economic growth out of the more advanced economies, usually  under the assumption that this was a crisis of insufficient demand instead of insufficient productivity, with varying but rather dismal outcomes. “Industrial policy”, environmental investments, ESG, ever increasing standards for goods destined for private consumption, from cars to electronics to food, haven't so far produced the “desired results”, and no...

ITALIANS DO IT BETTER....NOT: THE VACCINE PASSPORT FRACAS.     1. EU Green passport was conceived to allow EU citizens to cross internal borders in a relatively hassle-free way;  2. mainly two countries are enacting forms of “Internal vaccine passports” or are in the process, France and Italy;  3. However, the limitation pertaining the Passport are similar if not identical to those imposed in neighboring countries NOT adopting compulsory passports / phone apps, see Austria.  4. Given that, not only the vaccine passport per se is useless, but it opens the gate to instruments technically able to act as a stealth “Social Credit system” à là China, with ominous undertones.     The EU Covid passport , enacted on July 1st, was an attempt to give a standard way for citizens and visitors to cross borders and use long range transport under a standard certification and with a conformity of treatment irrespective of the border being crossed. The second part r...

  EMBRACE THE SUCK Dedicated to the many, MANY wonderful intelligent persons I met through twitter. In a world where my measure of men and women is “a good person to have in a storm”, I would want you all on my boat. Italy is following hard on the heels of Macron's France in designing and enforcing Vaccine Passports internally instead of enforcing a COVID vaccine mandate. The intent, in both cases, is hampering the lives of citizens enough to “nudge” them into going in droves to vaccine hubs, arm extended. And it won't work. And it will NEVER work, in my opinion. Sorry. For that you need a spreadsheet. Imagine, if you will , that an unknown force transported you back in time to the early expansion of tribes of Homo Sapiens. You are given a choice: you can join one of two otherwise identical tribes of about 1.000 people, with similar territories. In One tribe, whenever the Council/Ruler/King/Shaman subsumes the wisdom of the tribe, everyone complies and acts in the pres...

 I sing the body electric Why Italy's car capital is a signature example on how NOT to manage transport policy and electric cars I never liked committees. I don't like them at work, and most importantly, I like them off work even less. So, when the periodic Condo full assembly is due, I am rarely surprised at announcements about the latest and greatest in Italian Bureaucracy(c). A while back, the hot topic was... Garage regulations. Apparently, in order to mitigate fire hazards, every personal garage owner would have to refurbish his wiring/lightning (easy), install low consumption lights (ok, I can do it myself), install an EXTERNAL breaker (What the heck? What if I put a fridge in and kids cut it off just for giggles?) and..... get a government approved certification through a qualified electrician, 30 pages of gibberish for a paltry 120 EUR (Facepalm). It was not the 250 quid all in that bugged me. It was, as usual, the sheer idiocy of the whole process, because eve...

  Turin, June14th 2021 LEARNING TO LOVE THE BOMB why the West energy policy is a FOREIGN POLICY failure... and Putin is laughing. As much as possible the original source material is included or linked in the article, and this doesn't represent in any shape or form “investment advice” under current EU and/or Italian regulations. Today CNN reported that an EPR III nuclear reactor in China has some problems , of a nature that pushed its original designer and operator, French Framatome , To signal to US authorities its intention to ask for assistance under existing treaties by invoking an “ "imminent radiological threat" , one of the admissible reasons. China has been building up domestic electricity generation in various ways, Coal , Hydro , and Nuclear as well , understandably for an economy at a development stage where Energy intensity of GDP is  still high relative to more mature economies . Of course, a problem in a Nuclear plant design on which France has sta...

Dedicated to my bright and beautiful daughter, who today is celebrating her Birthday 750 km. from home.  Angheria Or why Italians have a tormented view of rule of law...and you would too in their place, or “will”, if your country is sliding in the same direction. ” Angheria” in today's Italian language means “prevarication”, but it was originally a technical term, meaning the days of compulsory labor that farmers had to personally provide to their feudal Lord. It is indeed the name of a form of taxation.   I am a lucky man. I have a family I adore, and a slew of acutely stimulating friends and acquaintances strewn across the world. Yet, “stimulating” means varied, opinions differ, and there are some individuals I value most because, on some issues, we are more unlike than like. But I was strangely put out when a good friend of mine, a person I REALLY look up to, lamented that “after the COVID scare, Italians are reverting to their usual self and disrespecting rules. ...