Articles by: Judith Harris

ROME – There’s good news from Italy, and it’s about time. (Never fear: at the tail end of this piece we’ll report some bad news, too.) The first bright spot is about the spread, and by this time we all know what that is. Silvio Berlusconi had weathered two years of girlie scandal and more court cases involving corruption than anyone but he cares to count. But just four months ago the spread—that is, the difference between interest rates for 10-year bonds in Germany and Italy—ballooned above 5%, and became the knockout blow to the Berlusconi government and perhaps to his political career. On March 9, for the first time in four months, the spread sank to 3% at the close of the financial day. 

This was a ratification of the so-called “government of technicians” called in to sort out the Italian financial muddle, and Premier Mario Monti, backed in European finance by Mario Draghi, can only be satisfied. Those favoring the government crowed that this show of international consensus proves that Premier Monti’s government is on the right track. 

Another sign of the slightly less troubled times: in a lengthy analysis of whether the problems of the European economy can weigh on U.S. elections, the authoritative economist Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, gave Europe the cleanest bill of health in a year. Moreover, discussing the economic problem nations he singled out, naturally, Greece and Ireland but never mentioned Italy at all, a first in a long time. (To see Kirkegaard’s qualifications, click here; to see his analysis, “Why President Obama can stop worrying about Europe, PIIE” click here

The second Good News item is that, as a crucial prerequisite to improved export sales capacity for Italian manufactured goods, computer literacy in Italy has bounced up to almost 53% for use of a computer and almost 51% for use of the Internet, according to the official statistics-gathering agency, ISTAT. This is an improvement over the 51% and 48.9% respectively of  2010, and refers not solely to the adult population, but to the entire Italian population over age three. A territorial imbalance remains in computer use, however, with the North showing 56.9% versus the 44.6% of the South and, for the Internet, 56.3% versus 43.7% respectively. Those most computer savvy are between ages 15 and 19, predictably, but nearly 15% Italians between the ages of 65 and 74 are now linked in. 

This is a major leap forward. In the not very recent past the challenge to Italy was literacy itself, for in 1960 one out of every four Italians was totally illiterate. A valiant attempt to remedy this began in 1960 with a course of instruction via TV, with teacher Alberto Manzi (1924-1997) speaking in front of a blackboard, called, “Non e’ mai troppo tardi,” it’s never too late to learn to read. The idea was Manzi’s, and at the time few owned TV sets so the lessons were broadcast in local schools in small farm towns and villages, after the men (few women attended) came in from the fields in the evening, and especially in the South of Italy. RAI historians believe that, through these lessons, 1.5 million adults were able to obtain certificates showing that they had completed elementary school. (For a history of this wonderful RAI project, click here
 

And now, for a bit of bad news. Naturally, not everyone crowed over the drop in the spread. The secretary of Berlusconi’s Liberty Party (PdL), Angelino Alfano, never showed up for a meeting scheduled with the leaders of the political parties who keep Monti in power, and so the meeting had to be cancelled. “With the reduction of the [economic] spread now we must hope that the spread among the politicians won’t increase,” was Monti’s wry comment from Belgrade, where he was on official visit. Pierferdinando Casini was reproachful and firmly in support of Monti: “This is not the time for polemics. The spread is on its way down, and this government is proving to be fruitful. To weaken the government now is not useful. And there’s no doubt that [canceling the meeting] weakens the government.”

Perhaps the most irritating news item for the Bad News Gazette was another unfortunate outburst from the ever truculent Senator Umberto Bossi, still head of the Northern League. “Monti risks his life, the North will do him in.” (Monti rischia la vita, il nord lo fara fuori.) At what sounded like a threat, many Italians reacted, and Bossi backed off slightly, saying that he had been “travisato” (misunderstood): “It’s Monti who threatens us.”

Indeed. 

At the same time Bossi continued his campaign to be rid of the Italian national anthem Fratelli d’Italia, known as the Mameli Hymn. Behind this outburst was the Culture Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which is seeking to have singing of that national anthem obligatory in schools and the institution of a national day honoring Italian unity and its Constitution, as of 2013. All Italy’s political parties save the League are backing the bill—and that too is good news. 

ROME – For the first time in history the Vatican is offering the Roman public and visitors a peek into its famous “secret archives,” its collection of ancient and modern documents kept rigorously under lock and key in closely guarded halls next to the Vatican Library. The archives—properly known in Latin as Archivum Secretum Vaticanum—were hidden away some four centuries ago on orders of Pope Paul V (1552-1621), a Borghese family aristocrat who had been educated as a lawyer in Perugia and Padua before coming to Rome. 

Most unusually, the Vatican has organized an exhibition called Lux in Arcanum, which opened this week in the Capitoline Museum in Rome and will remain until September. On view is a selection of one hundred precious documents selected from among the 35,000 volumes that occupy some 52 miles, or 84 km, of shelf space. Among the treasures which can be seen for the first time is a 180-foot-long parchment scroll from the trial of the Knights of Templar, which took place in Paris between 1309 and 1311. The warrior monks’ order had been accused of heresy, idolatry and sodomy, and was disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312.  
 

The Vatican Secret Archives have always generated curiosity, and for a sneak preview German TV sent a crew, as did the BBC. Until 1881, when researchers were given entrée for the first time, the secret archives were absolutely prohibited to visitors. Even today, when a thousand or so scholars are allowed entry into the secret archives every year to conduct research, visitors are barred, save for such rare exceptions as members of the British royal family, always welcome and treated to a showing of correspondence between Henry VIII and his desire for a divorce.

One of the most curious of the documents on view is a centuries-old numbered key for the secret encoding of documents. But otherwise the word “secret” referring to the archives is something of a misnomer because the word was originally intended as signifying private as a personal possession of the pope. But in fact, tucked away, and printed on everything from papyrus to silk and even birch bark, are countless truly secret documents. Tantalizing to scholars, they are believed to include those that pertain to the relations between Pope Pius XII and Nazi Germany. Nothing like that is on view inside the Capitoline Museum, but there are plenty of other fascinating documents.

Among the most important documents on view is one signed on May 10 1633 by Galileo Galilei, when he was on trial in Rome for treason. In this document he abjures his theory that the earth circles the sun, which he had written the previous year and published in a treatise called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Another is a letter from the British Parliament insisting upon Henry VIII’s legitimate request for a divorce, and threatening serious consequences if the Roman Catholic Church does not meet his wishes.

Two on view are from the Northern Hemisphere. In one Abraham Lincoln, at the time just elected President, writes on Feb. 8, 1861, asking for the Vatican state to recognize his envoy Rufus King as the new Minister to the Holy See. More picturesque is the now fading letter in black ink on birch bark dated 29 In the Month of Flowers 1887. The sender’s address is indicated as “In the Place Where the Tall Grasses Grow.” The letter author, Pierre Pilsémont, is the head of the Christian community of Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indians, and he has written to Pope Leo XIII, whom he addresses as “Great Master of Prayer, he who acts in Jesus’s stead.” He thanks the pontiff for having sent to the Ojibwe “a guardian of Prayer,” in the form of the apostolic vicar of Pontiac, Narcisse Zépherin Lorrain. 

A number of women who are famous in history are represented. The original abdication declaration signed by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1654 is on view, flanked by dozens of wooden capsules that look like bottle tops but hold, inside, wax seals intended for use to seal documents. Queen Christina, memorably portrayed in a silent film by Greta Garbo and in a pop book by Barbara Cartland, was crowned in 1650 and abdicated only four years later. She passed her crown to her male cousin on grounds that she did not intend to marry and have children; shortly afterward she converted from the Lutheran faith to Catholicism. When she came to Rome the following year she entered through a city gate redesigned specifically for her by Gianlorenzo Bernini at Piazza del Popolo. For the Church, her conversion was a triumph; her father had been the victor of the Thirty Years War, which had pitted Catholic Spain, Austria and Italy against Germany, Sweden, Holland and France. At the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended that devastating war, the papal envoy had been forced to kneel before the Swedish crown (at that time Sweden ruled Germany) in an humiliating acknowledgement of surrender. Once in Rome, however, Christina—an intellectual, refined, arrogant—proved to be difficult to handle. She is believed to have been a Lesbian or an Intersexual. 

The second woman represented in the exhibition is Mary Queen of Scots. After no less than twenty years in prison she had just been informed that she would be put to death when she sat down to write a letter to the pope dated Nov. 23, 1586, informing him of this, in French. Adjacent is a bishop’s annotation of the same date guaranteeing that Mary Stuart was indeed the writer of the letter. In it she touchingly wrote the famous words, “In my end lies my beginning.”

A third woman was the imprisoned Marie Antoinette, who wrote her brother-in-law a note describing the difficult conditions of her detention in prison in Paris. She was put to the guillotine on Oct. 16, 1793.

ROME –  American reporter Joe Queenan has just determined that, as the headline over his Wall Street Journal article of Feb. 15 proclaims, “Italian Moms Are the Best.” True, he was speaking of Italian-American mothers who are terrific cooks, so I admit to extrapolating to include all Italian mammas (of which I happen to be one, not to mention nonna of three nipotini).

Here’s what he says: “I never met anyone who was more beloved by her kids than Mrs. Giardinelli, though she wasn't much different from all the other Italian-American mothers I have known. Italian-American moms love their kids, they look out for their kids, they defend their kids, and because of that their kids generally grow up to be pillars of the community.”
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204883304577221130871808026.html)

Whoa! Not so long ago we were insulting the mamma italiana for creating a couple of generations of bamboccioni—that is, unemployed, unemployable and lazy youth. The word is a neologism, popularized a few years back by a Minister of the Economy, the late Paolo Padoa Schioppa. From bambino, child, the word is defined by an Italian dictionary (my translation) as “a man with infantile or spoiled behavior, immature.” In English it’s usually translated as  “mama’s boy.”

But the meaning is slippery and changes with the times. Before the present economic crisis, the bamboccione was a beloved Italian institution and still socially acceptable enough for singer Francesco Friggione to celebrate him in a sarcastic but affectionate song whose lyrics go, “Come on, Mamma, make a risotto. Papa, I need fifty euros tonight for the disco. I’m lost without Mamma and Papa…. Hey, I’m stayin’ home with the folks, till I inherit.” (you can see and hear it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X467cRITzmw).For the true bamboccione work was out of the question, and so an enterprising sofa manufacturer put up a giant billboard at streetside below the Parioli hill in Rome showing a youth stretched out and dozing on a sofa.

“For your bamboccione,” said the ad, intimating that  (1) everyone has one at home, and (2) he (rarely she) warrants a comfy new sofa, not to mention laundry washed and ironed, pasta a-plenty and holidays in the Maldives with buddy bamboccioni and their assorted girlfriends, whose way would similarly be paid by adoring parents.An economy on the skids has put an end to all this, and, with Italy formally declared in recession following two quarters of negative growth, the figure of the bamboccione has tumbled into disgrace.

Michel Martone, the present undersecretary for Labor and Social Policies, called those young people who fail to be graduated from university by age 28 “sfigati” (lazy slobs). Even Premier Mario Monti’s preaching that a guaranteed job-for-life was “monotonous,” was taken as insinuating that many of Italy’s young people want an easy life rather than hard work. Labor Minister Elsa Fornero ground it in further by declaring that young people should not be afraid of seeking work far from home—and then it was pointed out that her own daughter works in the same university which employs both Fornero and her husband.

Not surprisingly, being written off as “bamboccioni” and “sfigati” brought a flood of recriminations from the hordes of educated and underpaid or unpaid young people who work or are seeking work. “We are being humiliated,” one wrote on a blog site. “Martone shows he does not understand the Italian university system.” Other angry young people explained that, where there are limited places to enter university, those with recommendations have been filling the quotas at the expense of those without.

The statistics once again tell the story. On Thursday the national statistics agency ISTAT revealed that, among those between 18 and 29 years of age, jobs have dropped by 2.5% the past quarter over the same period last year. This translates into a loss of some 80,000 jobs for young people over the past year. Young women are worse off than the men, with only one out of two employed and, in the South, only one out of three.The sad truth is that Italy has let its youth slip between the social cracks. “Until yesterday young people were a symbol of the future, of progress, of a tomorrow that is already here and a motor of the economy—of consumption and consumers, but they’ve now gone out of fashion….

Young people in Italy no longer represent the future,” commentator Ilvo Diamanti wrote in an op ed in La Repubblica Feb. 13. Not surprisingly, employers shy away from giving lifetime contracts. The trade unions defend workers, yet represent only those who have these contracts. No one has been speaking for the young Italians who have been forced into bamboccione-hood.The government is aware of this, and Minister Fornero, promoting a reform of the labor market at a meeting in Brussels of the EU Council of social affairs and employment, spoke in favor of “a greater participation of youth, women and older workers.”

The government has a number of proposals to be discussed in coming weeks with the labor unions and with industry:--to introduce a broader type of apprentice system--to devise a system of unemployment benefits;--to revise the rigid contract system. The latter is particularly important. Says Fornero: “Too many types [of contract] have over the years created the widespread precarious system among youth…. A battle against youth unemployment is our priority.”It is to be hoped; no one wants to see the sort of street rioting of Athens.But old ways die hard. Newspaper writers here still speak of a man pushing 30 as a “youth,” and too many Italian leaders still refuse to make way for newcomers.

This is a country where old people are still revered and still in command, which may help to explain why so many Italians infantilize their young people, and many young people allow themselves to be treated like children. From political parties to trade unions, many of these leaders look more suited to floating on a golden pond than to leading Italy into a future which will need the help of every last one of its educated, talented young people.

ROME – Indeed it may be boring to those nine out of ten Italian workers who have one, but, as economist Monti well knows, a job for life is the object of anguished desire for the almost 2.8 million workers who do not. According to the official statistics agency ISTAT, reporting on the third quarter of 2011, the numbers of these have-not’s continue to grow, and during the past year another 166,000 short-term contracts were awarded, a hike of 7.6%.

Up-to-date figures show that nine out of ten workers in Italy still enjoy lifetime contracts, a lingering result of a combination of well-meant Catholic-Socialist social policy goals that emerged in the early postwar era under the influence in part of the Swedish model of social democracy.
 

As a result, the forty- and fifty-somethings who benefit from lifetime contracts can sit back and whittle their thumbs (and many do) while Italy’s youth, already struggling against a recession with no end in sight, are now being clobbered in a labor market that is shifting rapidly from overly protective to (perhaps) overly precarious.

Monti’s misstep, to the extent that it was, came during his first interview with a Silvio Berlusconi-owned TV channel on Feb. 1. What he actually said was: “Regarding the labor market it is normal to have a dialogue [presumably between government and trade unions], and this dialogue will take place shortly, with an Italy that is also European. The principal goal of the reform we want, and to which [Labor] Minister Fornero and the entire government are committed, is to reduce the terrible apartheid that exists in the labor market between those who, because of their age or luck, are already in it and those younger who are working terribly hard to enter the job market or enter it in precarious conditions…. Young people have to get used to the idea that they will not have a fixed job for their whole lifetime. And then, let’s admit it, how very monotonous.”

So why did Monti’s saying this irritate so many? First, the jesting tone of his final remark intimated that this former president of an elite university, the Bocconi, is overly remote from the desperation of young people pleading for their first job or being hired for six months and then dropped. He probably meant to be consoling but came off as supercilious, “like Marie-Antoinette saying, ‘Let them eat cake,’ when the French complained they had no bread,’” as one pundit commented.

As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has recorded, Italy’s restrictions on firing workers are almost the toughest in Europe.” Article 18 of the 1970 Labor Code decrees that, after a worker completes a period of probation, any company with 15 or more employees must retain the worker or risk a costly lawsuit and be obliged to rehire him or her with back wages and social security contributions. For this reason some smaller companies have actually balked at hiring more than fourteen. This clause is the bone of contention that divides the unions and the manufacturers’ association, headed by Emma Marcegaglia.

Susanna Camusso, head of the leftist CGIL trade union, will be one of the trade unionists slated to begin negotiations shortly with the government. She defends Article 18 with tooth and claw. The idea of letting workers go is, to her, anathema. Although acknowledging to the press agency ANSA that “this government has done more than its predecessors,” to Monti’s comment she retorted that what was boring is continued talk of firing workers. “The priorities of the government must be to fight against precarious labor and against the underground economy…I imagine that Professor Monti can give us a list of regulations he considers overly protective. We hear the same song again and again [in favor of labor mobility]. That’s what is boring.”

And yet this is the future, and it is already here, as most thinking Italians know. Today one out of ten of those in the labor force have short-term contracts. Of this 10%, moreover, two-thirds are under age thirty-five. And almost half of these are younger still (aged 15-24) and already in the labor market while lacking protection from capricious firing. A failing company can fire workers, quite properly, but an unscrupulous employer can be rid of able employees when they find others at lower costs.

The fact is that Italy remains deeply conservative, and the vast majority, beginning with the obsolescent trade unions (“out of the ice age,” one former Socialist MP called them), still act upon the idea that what was good enough for Grandpa on the assembly line is still just right for Junior. This might have been true when the assembly line ruled, but today the factory system itself is going the way of the dinosaur. The strong economic growth of the Italy of the past—the Sixties and Seventies—was based upon two great industries, machine tools and textiles, showcased by fashion . When employers can find workers abroad who can perform the same mechanical operations for 90% less in wages, they will do so; and the textile industry, a co-efficient of fashion, is by definition problematic because fashions become unfashionable. 

What is Italy to do? It is hard to disagree with Gian Antonio Stella, journalist and writer for Corriere della Sera, who said the other day, “Italy must do what it does best. It has a unique heritage of art, architecture, of fabulous small towns, each with its own personality. It must set to work to protect these and its landscape. And then we can continue to attract people the world over.” This reporter could not agree more.

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