Thread: Italy Announces Austerity Local Protests Spread Turn Violent

Italy Announces Austerity Plan 2.0 As Local Protests Spread, Turn Violent

Submitted by Tyler Durden
09/06/2011 10:39 -0400
Comments: 117 / Reads: 7,577

After Berlusconi was scolded by everyone, but most importantly by backstop solvency provider ECB, for his bull in a China shop maneuver of the first, now defunct, Italian Austerity plan, here are the details from the next, soon to be gutted "Austerity", which readers may be forgiven, if they take it with just a grain of salt. According to Bloomberg, the details are as follows:

Plan to to include higher retirement age for women from 2014
To add 3% tax on income over 500k euros

Italy to approve constitutional law for budget balance Sept
To increase VAT from 20% to 21%.

Will anyone take this latest attempt to appease the ECB seriously? Of course not.

In the meantime, Italy, as predicted - remember Piazza Navona strikecam and all that, and especially its workers, are not happy http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... CG20110906 as protests proceed to engulf the country:



Protesters in Italy scuffled with police, burned flags and threw eggs and smoke bombs at banks on Tuesday in what they said could be a taste of escalating public disorder as public spending cuts bring pain to families.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is scrambling to enact deep cuts to prevent a Greek-style financial collapse. Protesters said this could lead to unrest like that seen on the streets of other austerity-hit European countries.

Tens of thousands of striking workers, students and pensioners joined marches in cities from Palermo to Turin, voicing opposition to the proposed 45.5 billion euro austerity package and discontent with Berlusconi's government.

"This is the first step of a crucial autumn, it is the chance our generation has to fight back," said 33-year-old Enrico Sitta at a march in Rome.

Protests in Italy have not reached the scale of mass demonstrations in Spain by groups known as the "indignados," or mass rallies at Syntagma Square in Athens that sparked violent clashes. But some in Rome expect popular anger to intensify if pressure on struggling households continues.

Italy's biggest union CGIL called Tuesday's strike against the austerity plan presented last month by Berlusconi's government, aimed at balancing the budget by 2013.

Many protesters voiced personal reasons for anger.

Italian workers, who already earn some of the lowest salaries in western Europe, have seen wages stagnate while consumer prices shoot up and are furious at having to shoulder further burdens in the government's austerity plan.

Italy has already introduced delays to retirement and freezes on state salaries as part of previous austerity measures. A plan in the latest package would withhold the retirement funds of public sector employees for two years after leaving their jobs.

Industrial worker Claudio Bargilli, 47, called the proposed cuts "a social massacre."

"The government is presenting cuts upon cuts, and we can't make it to the end of the month," he said, adding that he and his colleagues were already close to the poverty line, surviving on an income of 1,000 euros a month.

We give Berlusconi's government at most 3 months. Countdown starts now.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/italy-ann ... rn-violent

this is why I believe Hoffa said what he said

Obama knows its all coming here and he was just priming his base for the Fun and Crazy times.

You will bear the brunt of this fiscal calamity and Obama will keep the check cashing pump primed at all of the Unions

the collapse will be felt on the Right; not on the left

Bring Out Your Dead - UBS Quantifies Costs Of Euro Break Up, Warns Of Collapse Of Banking System And Civil War

Submitted by Tyler Durden
09/05/2011 20:15 -0400
Comments: 471 / Reads: 43,127

Any time a major bank releases a report saying a given course of action is too costly, too prohibitive, too blonde, or simply too impossible, it is nearly guaranteed that that is precisely the course of action about to be undertaken. Which is why all non-euro skeptics are advised to shield their eyes and look away from the just released report by UBS (of surging 3 Month USD Libor rate fame) titled "Euro Break Up - The Consequences." UBS conveniently sets up the straw man as follows: "Under the current structure and with the current membership, the Euro does not work. Either the current structure will have to change, or the current membership will have to change." So far so good. Yet where it gets scary is when UBS quantifies the actual opportunity cost to one or more countries leaving the Euro. Notably Germany. "Were a stronger country such as Germany to leave the Euro, the consequences would include corporate default, recapitalisation of the banking system and collapse of international trade. If Germany were to leave, we believe the cost to be around EUR6,000 to EUR8,000 for every German adult and child in the first year, and a range of EUR3,500 to EUR4,500 per person per year thereafter. That is the equivalent of 20% to 25% of GDP in the first year. " It also would mean the end of UBS, but we digress. Where it gets even more scary is when UBS, like many other banks to come, succumbs to the Mutual Assured Destruction trope made so popular by ole' Hank Paulson : "The economic cost is, in many ways, the least of the concerns investors should have about a break-up. Fragmentation of the Euro would incur political costs. Europe’s “soft powerâ€

[b]“With immediate effectâ€

escalating public disorder as public spending cuts bring pain to families.

Notice who is protesting? Workers aka Unions/Labor Party Thugs, Liberals, Socialist...

They are rising up against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, which is a Conservative.

See a pattern here? Over and over again, the same thing... country after country. Same thing is going on here.

The Euro was a doomed plan from the very conception and a few money makers suckered countries into unifying for their financial benefit. So they could free flow their goods under a single junk currency and exploit.

If the people are angry, they should go after the wealthy and the shadow government behind the EU. The EU is just a buffer and scape goat, and it basically acts like a shell corporation for the real money makers.

Ironically, the very people who are the puppets of the EU are the Liberal government officials whose ignorant supports are causing an uprising in the streets.

Dixie