After Sylvio Leaves, Strikes and Protests Spread in Italy

In the wake of Burlesquoni’s departure, strikes and protest have spread across Italy,  against the economic crisis faced by yet another eurozone country.

Mario Monti, Italy’s new Premier, was ‘selected’ by the Senate to manage the country out of its economic crisis. For his cabinet, the former economist and European Union competition commissioner has hand-picked fellow bankers, professors and business elite, to form an unelected technocrat governing body for the ‘democratic’ nation.

Three years after the bankers wrecked the financial system, they’ve now been put in charge of Italy’s political system. As the lamp-post swinging godfather of fascism himself put it, “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”

This worrying trend is spreading throughout the eurozone as countries with no hope of paying off their national debt are ruled by the very people who were at the epicentre of the banking crisis that caused their downfall. And it’s not through the choice of the electorate.

Monti has yet to announce the details of his ‘anti-crisis strategy’, but Italians are already on the streets over the blatant hijacking of their government by the financial corporatocracy. In Milan, students clashed with riot cops as they marched to Bocconi University, the breeding ground for the country’s future finance moguls. In Sicily, demonstrators threw eggs and smoke bombs at banks, and rocks at police, who hit back with pepper spray.