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Rome.

Albert Camus in his essay “L’Exil d’Hélène” discusses contemporary disregard for the Greek value of limits. Camus writes that only the artist by his nature recognizes his limits, limits which the historic spirit disregards. The very idea of a super-secret organization like Gladio to remake the world in its own image reflects that same disregard for the Greek values that Camus so cherished.

When in the early 1970s an Italian right-wing journalist told me about a secret army training in Italy’s mountains, I scoffed at first thinking he was repeating a rumor picked up from some scoop-obsessed reporter. But my tune began changing when he gave it a name—“Stay Behind Army”—and explained it was a secret army to fight the Soviet armies which someday soon would invade West Europe. He gave me the name of a member of that secret army who would talk with me.

A few days later on a street corner near Rome’s Sapienza University I met a sleazy-looking Roman in his early twenties accompanied by a friend. Both of them kept looking around us, as if checking for tails. Their behavior was that of men on the run, yet men of destiny. They talked readily. And I, without realizing it, was being shown a speck of a new planet. Speaking softly in a crisp language with their Rome accents, they told me they had just finished a military training course in the nearby Abruzzi Mountains after having done basic training in Sardinia. Several times they used the term “Secret Army”, lowering their voices and glancing around each time they pronounced the words. And no, they answered, the organizers would not allow journalist visits, and that yes, the secret army was well equipped and ready.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Like Stalingrad: Italy’s Concrete Infrastructure is Melting in the Rain

November 28, 2019

Like Stalingrad: Italy’s Concrete Infrastructure is Melting in the Rain

The region of Liguria, within the red circle, is a narrow strip of land stuck between the Appennini Mountains and the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is also a critical element of the transportation system that connects France and the Po valley to the rest of Italy. As you may imagine, this heavily urbanized region is subjected to disastrous floods. The situation became so bad, recently, that the president of the Liguria region declared it was like the siege of Stalingrad, during WWII. The image above is from a presentation by Massimo Lanfranco, highly recommended!

When you have a fame of being a catastrophist or a Cassandra, reading that some of your prophecies turned out to be true may be a little unsettling. But it seems that I understood something correctly with the chapter of my recent book “Before the Collapse,” where I described how the world’s concrete infrastructure was getting old and decaying and how the situation was going to get worse with time.

In my take of the situation, I was inspired by the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genova, Italy, in 2018, but I was sure that worse things were going to happen. And it seems that I was right: the recent disasters in Southern Europe (France, Greece, and Italy) show how roads, railways, and buildings, are fragile, often on the edge of collapse. Rains heavier than usual are sufficient to create disasters, in part because of landslides and floods, in part because of the aged and weakened concrete structures. And, with climate change pressing forward, heavy rains are going to be more and more common.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Declares State Of Emergency As Record Flooding In Venice Worsens

November 15, 2019

Italy Declares State Of Emergency As Record Flooding In Venice Worsens

After “apocalyptic” flooding brought the city of Venice “to its knees” on Wednesday, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared a state emergency, giving Venice access to millions in disaster recovery money to help repair the damage from what appears to be the second-worst round of flooding in 50 years.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared a state of emergency for the city of Venice late Thursday due to exceptionally high tides – rising to 71 inches above their benchmark on Wednesday, the highest in half a century. On Friday morning they were 61 inches above normal, according to Bloomberg.

At one point, a classic Banksy mural of a refugee in a life jacket became almost halfway covered by floodwaters.

*Banksy mural partially submerged in Venice*

As the flooding worsened, Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed the flooding on climate change, while some pointed to political failures and corruption.

According to local data initially reported by Italy’s ANSA newswire, Venice suffered its second exceptionally high tide in a week on Friday, with waters rising 154 centimeters – or 61 inches – above their benchmark.

The historic city, which was constructed on a network of canals between hundreds of small islands in the Adriatic sea, was still reeling from the 187-centimeter tide it recorded on Wednesday, the highest in half a century.

Bracing for Friday’s tide, Brugnaro closed St. Mark’s Square after the 11th century basilica there flooded. The city’s water buses, known as vaporetti, were suspended because of the rising tide, and schools were also closed. He has blamed the floods on climate change, while Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio has raised the issue of political corruption as a factor in the flooding.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Won’t Admit the Mini-BOTs Are Coming

June 26, 2019

Europe Won’t Admit the Mini-BOTs Are Coming

Italy is in serious trouble financially. This is virtually common knowledge at this point. What isn’t common knowledge is its Euroskeptic government led by Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Five Star Movement’s Luigi Di Maio are preparing an assault on the foundation of the European Union itself to save Italy.

And that assault comes with the most innocuous name. Mini-BOT. Mini-BOTs were originally the idea of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis to assist Greece get out of the stranglehold placed on it by the euro.

What is a mini-BOT? It is a small denomination (mini) Bill of Treasury (BOT) that can be issued by, in this case, the Italian government to act as a domestic currency for settling government debts, paying taxes, etc.

It would be a parallel currency which could circulate freely domestically at a discount to the euro which would work as a medium of exchange to reflect the reality of the Italian economy better than the euro does.

The euro’s value is dominated by Germany’s economy. And, in short, by being so the euro overvalues Italy’s labor pool and undervalues Germany’s. Gresham’s Law states under-valued money is hoarded and over-valued spent. In Italy the euro is hoarded. In Germany it is spent. This is why Germany runs such a massive trade surplus against the other members of the euro-zone.

Italy (and Greece, Portugal, Spain and others) need a currency that can circulate to properly support domestic trade.

By mispricing Italian labor via the euro it keeps the goods produced in Italy uncompetitive on the world market. Italy’s central bank can only issue euro-denominated debt which trades at rates far lower than it should, enhancing Germany’s position.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italian Yields Jump As Salvini Threatens To Crash Government

May 30, 2019

Italian Yields Jump As Salvini Threatens To Crash Government

Clearly emboldened by the EU Parliamentary results, where the League won a plurality of the vote in Italy, Matteo Salvini on Thursday sent BTP yields higher by threatening to crash the Italian government if the Five Star Movement doesn’t back his tax-cut plan.

BTP yields have been moving higher over the past two weeks as Salvini has brushed off Europe’s threats to fine Italy up to €4 billion over its refusal to rein in its debt and deficit-spending plans. This would be the first time the European Commission has fined a member state over violations of its fiscal rules.

But Salvini, who is now indisputably the most powerful political figure in Italy, isn’t backing down. He has remained defiant, even as Italy braces for the EU to initiate another excessive debt proceeding on Wednesday, when reviews of member states’ fiscal compliance are expected.

As the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard pointed out in a column yesterday, Salvini has revived threats to initiate an Italian parallel currency – the so-called “mini-BOT” Italian Treasury bills that a Forbes columnist once warned was the “biggest threat to the future of the eurozone.”

And with Salvini adding to the political chaos by taking the first tentative steps toward ousting Five Star from the ruling coalition, Italian bond holders will have only themselves to blame if they don’t anticipate more market-rattling political chaos, and position accordingly.

The Great Fossil Cycle and US: Story of a Family

May 1, 2019

The Great Fossil Cycle and US: Story of a Family

Last week, I published a post on how the economic decline of Italy led me to move to a smaller house, abandoning the mansion that my parents had built during better times. Complementing that post, I thought I could repropose a post I had published in 2017, reproduced here with some minor modifications. You can find more data about the story of the Bardi family on the “Chimeras” blog.

My great-great grandfather, Ferdinando Bardi. The story of the branch of the Bardi family to which I belong is inextricably linked to the great world cycle of the fossil fuels. (this painting was made by Ferdinando’s son, Antonio)

There was a time, long ago, when the Bardis of Florence were rich and powerful, but that branch of the family disappeared with the end of the Renaissance. The most remote ancestors of mine that I can track were living during the early 19th century and they were all poor, probably very poor. But their life was to change with the great fossil revolution that had started in England in the 18th century. The consequences were to spill over to Italy in the centuries that followed.

My great-great grandfather Ferdinando (born in 1822) lived in an age when coal was just starting to become commonplace and people would still use whale oil to light up their homes. He was a soldier in the infantry of the Grand-Duke of Tuscany and then of the King of Italy, when Tuscany merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, in 1861. The family lore says that Ferdinando fought with Garibaldi in Southern Italy, but there is no trace of him in the records as a volunteer of Garibaldi’s army. He may have fought there with the regular army, though.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance

April 7, 2019

Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance

Between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia: Overview of the book by Paul L. Williams

On the hot summer morning of Aug. 2, 1980 a massive explosion ripped apart the main waiting room of the Bologna railway station. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds more injured. Though at first blamed on Italy’s legendary urban guerrillas, The Red Brigades, it soon emerged that the attack had, in fact, originated from within the ‘deep state’ of the Italian government itself.

The full nature of this secret parallel state would only come to light a decade later when the Italian premier, Giulio Andreotti, under questioning from a special commission of inquiry, revealed the existence of arms caches stashed all around the country and which were at the disposal of an organization which later came to be identified as ‘Gladio’.

The members of this group turned out to include not only hundreds of far-right figures in the intelligence, military, government, media, Church and corporate sectors, but a motley assortment of unreconstructed WW2 fascists, psychopaths and criminal underworld types to boot. And despite Andreotti’s attempts to airbrush the group as ‘patriots’ it appeared evident to much of the rest of the Italian polity that these seemed rather more like pretty bad folk indeed. Little did they know. Follow-up research by the likes of Daniele Ganser, Claudio Celani, Jurgen Roth and Henrik Kruger traced connections to similar groups spread throughout Europe of which all were found to be deep state terrorist organizations, and all of which were found, ultimately, to be subservient unto the highest levels of the CIA and NATO command structures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Default Or Exit: A Battle Between Italy And The EU Is Inevitable

March 8, 2019

Default Or Exit: A Battle Between Italy And The EU Is Inevitable

There is a dual Italian crisis brewing in the European Union. On the one hand, it is a political, or even geopolitical, crisis. Italy is undermining the unity of the European Union; blocking the EU’s recognition of those behind the coup in Venezuela as the legitimate authority; preventing the expansion of sanctions against Russia; and even supporting the ‘yellow vest’ movement in France, which is arousing the anger of the French government.

On the other hand, the crisis is economic in nature. Italy is once more sliding into a recession (economic growth was negative in the country); Italian banks are again facing financial problems; and the business media has already estimated that the Italian economic crisis could blow up the entire European banking system.

There is a strong possibility that the EU’s leaders will soon be faced with a choice: try to save Italy (and the whole of Europe) from yet another crisis or set an example by punishing the Italian government for the country’s independent economic and foreign policies. In turn, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government will most likely have its own dilemma to deal with: bow down and sell its principles to get help from Brussels or go all out and regain Italian independence. The choice will not be easy and either decision will be painful. Neither ending to this Italian drama could really be called happy. As this headline in The Telegraph quite rightly notes: “Crisis brewing in Italy will lead to default, exit from the euro, or both.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italian Meddling at French Maidan: When Will Russia Be Accused?

February 16, 2019

Italian Meddling at French Maidan: When Will Russia Be Accused?

Cutting diplomatic relations and sending one’s ambassador back home are acts associated with declaring war, which is what makes France’s decision to pull their ambassador out of Rome very unusual to say the least. The rhetoric from the French side even gives off a sort of “pre-war” aroma declaring that the Italians have supposedly made “unfounded attacks” against French policy regarding migration and EU economics, but the main spark that lit the flame of this decision to call back the ambassador is related to Italian meddling in the “yellow vest” protests.

The wildly diverse and bloody yellow vest protests are continuing throughout France with no sign of stopping anytime soon. It is important to note that all protest movements including those with yellow vests are organized by “someone”. There has never been a time where 10,000 people randomly all chose to simultaneously go clean their local park. But with talented organizers and some marketing 10,000 can be swayed to show up and clean said park no problem.

The driving force(s) behind the yellow vest protestors seems to be either unknown to the public or so radically diverse (there are many different groups with very different beliefs who are all on the “yellow” side) that there is no single actor driving this movement across the country.

Of course, by default there have been accusations that Russia is behind the chaos. When in doubt (and in the West) always blame Russia and never your own anti-populist policies bringing ruin to one of the most prosperous nations on Earth.

At this point there is now an official boogeyman for France to blame and surprisingly it is not Russia, but Italy as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio has met and openly been photographed with key players inside the yellow vest movement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy’s Gold enters the Political Fray. But who really owns it?

February 14, 2019

Italy’s Gold enters the Political Fray. But who really owns it?

Italy’s unpredictable political situation continues to throw up surprises with a controversial claim in national newspaper La Stampa this week that the country’s coalition government wants to sell part of Italy’s gold reserves to cover spending plans and to prevent the need to increase VAT in a forthcoming Italian budget.

While the claims by La Stampa are not really based on anything new, they still managed to cause an international media frenzy as they came a few days after Italy’s governing coalition launched verbal attacks on Italy’s central bankers and financial regulators.

Note that Italy claims to be the world’s third largest sovereign gold holder behind the US and Germany, with claimed monetary gold holdings of 2451.8 tonnes. Interestingly, unlike most countries where sovereign gold is owned by the State but managed by the country’s central bank, the Italian gold is officially owned by Italy’s central bank, Banca d’Italia (Bank of Italy), and not owned by the Italian State.

The Banca d’Italia furthermore claims that 1199.4 tonnes of the gold (or roughly half), is stored in the Bank’s gold vaults under it’s Palazzo Koch headquarters building in Rome, with most of the other half stored in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), and a small balance kept the Bank of England in London, and in an account of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in the vaults of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Berne, Switzerland. But without any documentary evidence or independent auditing or verification of any of its gold, especially the foreign held gold, these claims are impossible to verify.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Salvini Proposes Seizing Control Of Italy’s Gold Reserves From The Central Bank

February 11, 2019

Salvini Proposes Seizing Control Of Italy’s Gold Reserves From The Central Bank

Italy’s populist de facto leader Matteo Salvini seems set on shaking Europe’s financial establishment to the core.

One day after the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the League party, called for the elimination of Italy’s central bank and the country’s financial regulator, Consob, saying the two institutions should be “reduced to zero, more than changing one or two people, reduced to zero”, or in other words eliminated, and that “fraudsters” who inflicted losses on Italian savers should “end up in prison for a long time”, Salvini prompted fresh shocked gasps in Brussels and Frankfurt when he raised the possibility of seizing Italy’s massive gold reserves away from the country’s central bank.

“The gold is the property of the Italian people, not of anyone else,” Salvini said in comments to reporters on Monday, according to the FT.

The controversial comments, which were seen as threatening the “independence” of the Italian central bank, whose one-time head was none other than Mario Draghi, prompted Giovanni Tria, Italy’s economy minister, to defend the independence of the central bank.

Earlier in the day, Italy’s populists called on lawmakers to pass legislation stating that its gold holdings belong to the state, Bloomberg reported.

The gold ownership bill presented by euroskeptic lawmaker Claudio Borghi of the League adds to an already tense relationship between the Bank of Italy and the coalition government. It’s also sparked criticism from opposition politicians, and some national media argue that it may allow the government to raid the gold reserves to fund spending promises.

Borghi has rejected the accusation and said he’ll ensure Parliament has ultimate power. His concern is that ambiguity of ownership means that a victorious legal action against the central bank — for inadequate supervision, for example — leaves open the possibility of a claimant getting compensation in gold.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

France Recalls Ambassador From Italy After “Unprecedented” Verbal Attacks

February 7, 2019

France Recalls Ambassador From Italy After “Unprecedented” Verbal Attacks

The diplomatic row between France and Italy is escalating. More than half a year after Italy summoned the French ambassador over Europe’s migrant row, on Thursday France one-upped Italy when it announced it would recall its ambassador to Italy, citing “outrageous” verbal attacks, repeated “meddling” in its domestic affairs and “unacceptable” provocations.

✔

La France rappelle son ambassadeur en Italie “après des attaques” “sans précédent” (Quai d’Orsay) #AFP

The French foreign ministry said the decision was taken following a meeting between Italy’s deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio and leaders of the French Yellow Vest protester movement, trumpeting his support for the grassroots protests in defiance of President Emmanuel Macron.

“This is unprecedented since the war,” the foreign ministry said in an emailed statement on Thursday. “Having disagreements is one thing, but using the relationship for electoral purposes is quite another.”

Luigi di Maio, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement hailed the “winds of change across the Alps” yesterday on Twitter after meeting with Yellow Vest activists Cristophe Chalencon and Ingrid Levavasseur.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How An Italian Debt Crisis Could Take Down The EU

February 5, 2019

How An Italian Debt Crisis Could Take Down The EU

Plagued by another run of bank bailouts and simmering tensions between the partners in its ruling coalition, Italy’s brief reprieve following the detente between its populist rulers and angry bureaucrats in Brussels is already beginning to fade. As Bloomberg reminded us on Monday, Italy’s $1.7 trillion pile of public debt – the third largest sovereign debt pool in Europe – is threatening to set off a chain reaction that could hammer banks from Rome, to Madrid, to Frankfurt – and beyond.

Just the mention of the precarity of Italian debt markets “can induce a shudder of financial fear like no other” in bureaucrats and businessmen alike – particularly after Italy’s economy slid into a recession during Q4.

While much of Italy’s debt burden is held by its banks and private citizens, lenders outside of Italy are holding some 425 billion euros ($486 billion) in public and private debt.

The Bloomberg analysis of Italy’s financial foibles follows more reports that Italy’s ruling coalition between the anti-immigrant, pro-business League and the vaguely left-wing populist Five-Star Movement has become increasingly strained. Per BBG, the two parties are fighting a battle on two fronts over the construction of a high speed Alpine rail and a legal case involving League leader Matteo Salvini over his refusal to let the Dicotti migrant ship to dock in an Italian port last summer.

After M5S intimated that it could support the investigation, the League warned that such a move would be tantamount to “blackmail” against Salvini, whose lieutenants have been pushing for him to take advantage of the party’s rising poll numbers and push for early elections later this year. However, Salvini has rebuffed these demands, warning that there’s nothing stopping Italian President Sergio Mattarella from calling for a new coalition instead of new elections.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Building Anti-EU Axis

January 14, 2019

Italy Building Anti-EU Axis

“Today begins a journey that will continue in the coming months for a different Europe, for a change of the European Commission, of European policies, which puts at the center the right to life, work, health, safety, all that the European elites, financed by [billionaire Hungarian philanthropist George] Soros and represented by Macron, deny….” — Matteo Salvini, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior.
“Both President Macron and Mrs. Merkel have expressed frustration at the rise of populism and nationalism, and at Europe’s dithering in the face of problems such as climate change and mass migration….” — The Times.
“The only certainty I have of the European elections is that the socialists and the communists will always be less in Brussels — they have already done enough damage….” — Matteo Salvini.

During a January 9 visit to Poland, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that populists from Italy and Poland should spark a “European spring” and forge a “new equilibrium” to replace the influence of Germany and France in the European Parliament. Pictured: Salvini meets with Poland’s Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński in Warsaw on January 9. (Image source: Matteo Salvini Facebook page)

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is leading an effort to create a pan-European populist alliance to challenge the pro-European establishment over the future of the European Union. The aim is to reclaim sovereignty from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and transfer key EU powers back to national capitals.

Germany and France, the self-appointed guardians of European integration, are responding to the challenge with an ambitious counterplan to make the European Union a “more decisive power on the world stage.”

The showdown, which threatens to split the European Union down the middle between Eurosceptic nationalists and Europhile globalists, will heat up in coming weeks and months, ahead of elections for the European Parliament in late May 2019.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Likely in Recession Now: Germany, France, Italy Production Collapsed

January 12, 2019

Europe Likely in Recession Now: Germany, France, Italy Production Collapsed

German, French, and Italian industrial production collapsed in November. Italy GDP is negative for 3rd Quarter.

Italy GDP

Italy’s GDP was negative for the third quarter. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the euro zone’s third largest economy fell by 0.1 percent in July-September due to weaker domestic demand, statistics bureau ISTAT said, the first decline since the second quarter of 2014.

Based on industrial production, Germany and France will soon follow.

Germany Industrial Production

Analysts actually expected German IP to rise. Go figure.

German industrial output fell unexpectedly by 1.9 percent month-on-month in November 2018, missing market expectations of a 0.3 percent rise and following an upwardly revised 0.8 percent drop in October.

France Industrial Production

France’s industrial production fell 1.3 percent from a month earlier in November 2018, reversing an upwardly revised 1.3 percent growth in October and missing market expectations of a 0.2 percent gain.

Italy Industrial Production

Italy’s industrial production slumped 1.6 percent from a month earlier in November 2018, much worse than market expectations of a 0.3 percent decline and following a meager 0.1 percent gain in October.

Brink of Recession or Already In Recession?

The Telegraph asks Is Germany – and the Eurozone – On the Brink of Recession?

The water levels of the Rhine are low and Germany may be flirting with recession. The two are connected, many argue. The Rhine is a key artery for the transport of many goods into and through the country, particularly for the chemicals and energy industries.

But praying that the water rises and all will come good might not be enough. Just as the idea that negative growth in the third quarter was due to the temporary hit of emissions testing rules on an already troubled car industry, the one-off excuses are starting to wear a bit thin. There is a grander slowdown facing Berlin, and, as the eurozone’s economic powerhouse, potentially the rest of its members too.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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