Seconda casa

I rarely write about Italy, where I spent 10 years (during three tours) at the U.S. embassy.  We left via Pinciana 21, the deputy chief of mission’s residence, almost 20 years ago, while I was Charge’ d’affaires ad interim, which gets loosely translated on resume’s as “acting ambassador.”  I moved first to Villa Taverna, the ambassador’s residence, with then 11-year-old Adam, because they wanted to renovate the DCM’s apartment, across from the Villa Borghese.  I learned quickly why American ambassadors in Rome decide to work in the afternoons at home.  “The residence” is Capri in Rome.

I’m tempted to write today because we are leaving for Rome tomorrow for a 10-day vacation.  Have no fear:  I’ll continue to post from there.  I’ll give one talk–at the International Affairs Institute on the American approach to Iran’s nuclear program–but I’ll be seeing lots of people and no doubt talking about today’s other big problems:  the euro, Syria, North Africa will I imagine be among them.

The Italians have to take North Africa more seriously than we do.  They get a lot of gas from Algeria and Libya, where they have giant investments.  I’ll be interested to learn how they view the ongoing transition in Libya, a country they know particularly well as a former colonial possession.  Ditto for Algeria, where modest reforms and upcoming elections raise the question of whether what is now Africa’s biggest country (now that Sudan has split) can avoid a popular revolution and find a soft landing.  Syria will seem less important to most of my friends, though some will realize both how dangerous the current situation is and how beneficial the fall of the Assad regime could potentially be.

On the home front, Italy is recovering, at least for now.  Interest rates on government debt are far below their peaks now, the banks haven’t suffered too much, the budget has been at least temporarily straightened out, and the country has a prime minister, Mario Monti, who is more than welcome in Brussels and the White House.  I think they disinfected after Silvio Berlusconi’s visits. Monti, whom I knew as a professor when I was economic minster of the embassy in the late 1980s, is the model of decorum and integrity, almost an anti-Berlusconi.

But none of that makes ordinary Italians feel better off.  Unemployment and underemployment is high, taxes are up, and growth is worse than anemic.  Monti is a kind of bankruptcy trustee–he was put in to prevent the worst and will be allowed to stay until things really start looking up.  Then the politicians will engineer his fall and take back the helm, as they did after the previous trusteeships of Bank of Italy Governors Ciampi and Dini.  Giorgio Napolitano, the president who is credited with putting Monti in place, has limited powers under normal circumstances, and his term ends in 2013, when he will turn 88.  The European Union Germans are right to try to put in place a permanent restraint on deficit spending.  Otherwise, it’ll be back.

The question for Italy is whether it can live within those restraints.  My guess is it can if it wants to–the Italians are amazingly ingenious entrepreneurs.  I remember once visiting a textile manufacturer–his company made Blumarine, which was then all the rage, and I gather may still be–who explained to me the incredible network of small contractors who enabled him to stay competitive in a world that was already being inundated with cheap clothing from Asia.  I had arrived at his office from a visit to the Ferrari factory, where I saw a lot of numerically controlled machine tools manufacturing the world’s supposedly “hand-made” car (the boss explained that only the upholstery was handmade, as there were real quality advantages to robots in making the rest).  My Blumarine friend said he had a Ferrari in the garage.  Where did he drive it I asked?  “Drive it?” he replied.  No, no, no, he said. It is a great investment just sitting there.  You wouldn’t want to run up the mileage or take any risks.”

Clever they may be, but recent events have demonstrated some serious flaws in the Italian character.  The Costa Concordia off Tuscany and the Costa Allegra off the Seychelles are emblematic.  The first shipwrecked apparently because the captain was showing off the ship to his friends on shore.  The second suffered a crippling fire.  Berlusconi’s long tenure as prime minister was just as devastating to the ship of state.

Much of recent Italian history betrays neither good judgment nor good luck.  Italy needs both to stay afloat these days.  But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it won’t collapse before we walk its vicolo del divino amore again.  May it ever be thus.