Germany Warns Against "Silvio the Savior" (And That May Backfire); Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts

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Italians head to the polls on February 24-25 to replace the technocrat government of prime minister Mario Monti.

Pier Luigi Bersani, who heads the centre-left Bene Commune (Common Good) coalition was considered a shoo-in a few short weeks ago, at least in the Chamber (the lower house of parliament).

It’s all up in the air now as Silvio Berlusconi, head of the centre-right Il Popolo della Libertà (the People of Freedom) has staged a massive rally in the polls (now blacked out). Berlusconi has been on a rampage lately blaming Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel for the unemployment problems in Italy. It’s a populist message that is resonating well with voters.

Beppe Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) has been largely ignored in the Italian press, yet Grillo has been wildly popular at rallies. Grillo has a chance to come in second, and I would not be surprised by a first place finish.

Mario Monti, who heads the centrist Con Monti per l’Italia (With Monti for Italy) coalition, is running a very distant 4th.

“Fare per Fermare il Declino” (literally “Act to Stop the Decline”, acronym FiD), is a primarily Libertarian party founded less than a year ago but until a recent stumble had been gaining enough steam to possibly overtake Monti.

For further analysis of FiD and the other parties, please see European Reader Offers Insights on Upcoming Italian Election

Poll Blackouts

Officially, pollsters cannot post poll results in a blackout period before the election. That blackout period started February 9. Here is a snapshot of the polls on February 8.

Those results are misleading because they do not include undecided voters, and the undecided vote is a whopping 20-25 percent!

With such little difference between Berlusconi and Bersani, and with huge rallies for Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi, any outcome is possible. Will Grillo take votes from Berlusconi or Bersani (or both). If enough of both I could even envision a win. If he takes more votes from Bersani, then Berlusconi is likely to win.

From my experience, late deciders break in a massive way for one candidate or the other (and in the US election I predicted for Obama). Here, it appears against Bersani (to who is more uncertain).

Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts

Adding more confusion rather than clarity, Yahoo!News reports Fake horse racing blog dodges Italy’s election polls blackout

A blog appears to have found a way around a publishing ban on polls in the two weeks before the vote by writing up the results of pretend “underground horse races”, which appear to reflect each party’s standing.

On the final day polls could be published before the blackout fell, bloggers Andrea Mancia and Simone Bressan posted “The illegal races return!” on their site Notapolitica.it setting out the main “stables” and “jockeys” competing.

In line with the last published official polls, the winning horses of Tuesday’s “San Nicola Racetrack” came from the “Bien Comun” stables, a thinly disguised name for the centre-left “Italia Bene Comune” coalition.

The centre right of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was shown coming in just 3.5 “seconds” behind.  Using a mix of puns and French, Notapolitica.it renders centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani as jockey “Pier le Smacchiateur” and Mario Monti as “Mario de la Montaigne”. Berlusconi is dubbed “Burlesque”.

Horses representing Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement are referred to as “stellar”, while the names of races allude to different pollsters. “San Walter Giuliano Racecourse”, for example, appears to refer to research group SWG.

It is difficult to say if those are official polling results or fictional. Assuming the polls are accurate (not an assumption I am ready to make), it is still difficult to know how undecided voters were handled.

Germany Warns Against Berlusconi

Of potentially more importance, Berlin Warns Italians against Berlusconi

Here are a few examples from the story.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble reportedly said (but later denied) “Silvio Berlusconi may be an effective campaign strategist, but my advice to the Italians is not to make the same mistake again by re-electing him.”

Polenz, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said: “Italy needs political leaders who stand for the future. Berlusconi is certainly not one of them.”

One Italian bank even went so far this week as to issue a report arguing that a Berlusconi election would almost certainly force the country to apply for emergency bailout aid from the EU. Mediobanca, Italy’s largest investment bank, wrote that “a last-minute Berlusconi victory would scare the market sufficiently to put pressure on the spread.”

“Silvio the Savior”

In Italy, the opposite is happening. Spiegel reports Berlusconi’s Faithful: ‘Only Silvio Can Save Italy’

Adoration of Berlusconi in Italy remains widespread. In the parallel universe occupied by his followers, there is no room for doubt about Berlusconi and lines are clearly drawn. Silvio is good and the others are bad.

These fans gather at his speeches, like the Saturday rally in Palermo, where thousands crowded into the venerable Teatro Politeama. There were women in long fur coats and fine gentlemen in three-piece suits. Dock workers like Ferrante squeezed with them through the entrance, everyone pushing and shoving each other like adolescents at a rock concert. The hundreds who didn’t make it in must stand outside.

Silvio the Savior

Fans of the 76-year-old ex-premier see him as more than just a beacon of hope. “Berlusconi will now start a revolution,” says teacher Marinella Romano. She confesses “I have always loved Silvio.” Donatella Catalano, a friendly retiree, gushes, “He stands for everything that is good in the world.” The unemployed Ferrante says that “only Silvio can save Italy, he will bring us much good.”

Fully a quarter of Italians are prepared to vote for Berlusconi again. It is an astounding degree of homage paid to man who faces allegations of abuse of power and bribery; who faces the scandal surrounding the underage escort Karima el-Marough, alias Ruby Rubacuori; who has been blasted for blatantly misogynistic comments; and who broke many promises as prime minister. Instead, the opposition, left-leaning judges and even the Germans are blamed for all that is not right with Italy.

“It was Merkel who toppled him,” says retiree Catalano, referring to the German chancellor. She then turns to her neighbor and says: “It’s better not to tell the man anything, because the Germans always write negatively about Berlusconi.” Another voice yells: “First World War II and now attacks against Berlusconi!”

The comments are not surprising. In almost every campaign speech, Berlusconi rails against Germany. “Should we continue to allow Germany to dictate policies that ruin Italy?” he calls out. “Nooooo!” scream his followers.

Election Predictions

It’s difficult to judge from this side of the Atlantic, but things do not look good for a viable center-left coalition. At best, Bersani will win the Chamber and lose the Senate. That would likely result in a hung parliament.

Anti-German sentiment in Italy is high already. The entrance of German politicians into the battle may fuel that sentiment in a major way.

It is conceivable “Silvio the Savior” pulls off a stunning upset win in both the Chamber and Senate, but a Senate victory would still require a coalition (no party will come close to a majority).

In theory, Movimento 5 Stelle and Silvio Berlusconi could form a nice anti-Euro coalition and put the Euro to a vote, but given the anti-political party platform of Movimento 5 Stelle it’s hard to see that coalition forming.

Indeed it may be difficult if not impossible for any party to form a Senate coalition if Monti’s party does poorly enough (as I expect it will).

The most likely outcome once again is a hung parliament, and the next most likely outcome may very well be a return of Silvio Berlusconi (rather than a weak center left coalition of some sort that most seem to expect).

Regardless, Berlusconi is no savior (nor is there one to be found in the entire group). There are no good outcomes for Italy.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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Germany Warns Against "Silvio the Savior" (And That May Backfire); Fake Horse Race Odds Get Around Blackouts

"We"re Not Going to Be Pushed Around by the Antis"

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Wichita, Kansas, has been without a local abortion provider since an anti-abortion extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller in his church in May 2009. Now, one of Tiller’s former employees has bought his clinic and intends to reopen it this spring.

The Trust Women Foundation, led by former Tiller spokeswoman Julie Burkhart, purchased Tiller’s old office last September. The group has raised most of the $ 1 million it will take to reopen the clinic, and Burkhart, 46, and her staff have been busy renovating the office and recruiting doctors. Burkhart is originally from northern Oklahoma. She worked with Tiller at the clinic for seven years, and had moved away from Wichita shortly before his murder. She has since moved back to reopen the clinic, which she and her colleagues plan to call South Wind Women’s Center.

When it opens, the clinic will provide abortions only up to the 14th week, and will provide referrals for pregnancies that are farther along. It will also offer full gynecological services, like pap smears, breast exams, birth control prescriptions, and prenatal care. “We want to make it a place that’s open for all women,” Burkhart told Mother Jones. Without a clinic in town, women have been traveling more than three hours away to seek abortions at clinics in Kansas City and Oklahoma.

Of course, it’s not the pap smears that draw the anti-abortion protesters. And Wichita has had more than its share of protests. Tiller, one of the nation’s only late-term abortion providers, was a main focus of their actions. Operation Rescue moved its headquarters to Wichita to focus on the clinic. And protesters have blocked other would-be providers from opening clinics in the town in their quest to keep Wichita “abortion free.” Since Burkhart signaled her intention to reopen the clinic, anti-abortion groups have lodged complaints that the clinic didn’t have proper building permits (it did) and have started a petition drive to get the city council to rezone that part of town as residential so that the clinic can’t reopen.

I talked to Burkhart last week about her plans for South Wind Women’s Center.

Mother Jones: How did you come to the decision to reopen Dr. Tiller’s Clinic?

Julie Burkhart: This was something that a lot of us thought about almost immediately after Dr. Tiller’s murder in ’09. It was on our minds, but a lot of us just didn’t feel that we were emotionally able to go down that path and pass through those hoops in order to make this happen. I kept coming back to it, and other people I worked with kept coming back to it, that this was just the right thing to do. A year and a half after we lost Dr. Tiller, we were really able to say, “Okay, this is going to be hard, this is going to be challenging—probably the biggest challenge of our lives—but we’re going to get this done.”

MJ: How did you overcome that apprehension and decide you needed to do it, even if it was going to be hard?

JB: I kept thinking that somebody else was going to do this. There were some other very well intentioned people who wanted to do this, and it just didn’t seem to work out for one reason or another. Here we live in a pretty good-sized city, Wichita, with a metropolitan area of around 650,000 people. It’s like really, come on. We’re a town that used to have three abortion clinics. Shouldn’t we be able to have at least one ob-gyn practice that offers abortion care? We realized we just needed to pick up the torch and do it.

MJ: Wichita has been the subject of so much attention from both anti- and pro-choice activists. What is the significance of reopening the clinic?

JB: First and foremost, we want to make sure that women who need to see us, want to come see us, are able to access care. We’re looking at a few thousand women who now have to travel outside the area each year. Secondly, what it says is that no matter where you live in the United States of America, women will have access to reproductive health care. This community has just been so embroiled in the abortion…I hate to say the abortion “debate,” but just the turmoil. Some people would say, “Just leave it alone and let it go.” However, we can’t really have true freedom in this country until everyone can access that right.

Why, just because we live in Kansas, in the middle of the country, should women be faced with more hardship? Why should it just be women on the coast where the laws are typically more liberal that have access to abortion care? I hope that’s what people get out of this—that no matter where you are as a woman, you’re entitled to that right.

MJ: Given the atmosphere in Wichita, were there any concerns about coming back there?

JB: Our concerns are about security, and making sure it’s peaceful at our clinic and things are peaceful at our homes. I feel that there’s a bit of a different attitude here now. The community in general really gets and understands that a medical facility like ours is needed in this community. Frankly, the only people we get the pushback from by and large are the antis. They’re good bullies. But people in this community are speaking out maybe a little bit more. There’s a little bit more understanding. We want people to understand that this is a new day; this is a new clinic. We’re working on a different model of health care for women. And we’re not going to be pushed around by the antis.

MJ: We just marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade a few weeks ago. Where do you think we are as a country on abortion access, and where are we heading?

JB: Well, I’m hoping that we’re coming to a turning point in our society where we can address this issue and this need instead of trying to hide from it, and can have a more honest dialogue. Frankly, I’m guilty of the same thing, because I went through a period of time where it was commonplace to not say the A-word, to try to dance around the issue. Looking back, I’m not sure that was the best strategy for us.

I’m hoping that we’re coming to a point where we can just be more honest, where we can lay things on the table and have those discussions. Because this is what I feel about abortion care: I think abortion is about motherhood. Abortion is about motherhood because by and large women coming in to have abortions are concerned about the kind of life and the future for their children. Women are thinking in a very responsible manner when choosing that. The anti-choice groups often portray women as irresponsible and making these whimsical decisions. But in truth these are very well thought out decisions women are making. They’re taking responsibility for their lives and the lives of their future families.

Politics | Mother Jones

"We"re Not Going to Be Pushed Around by the Antis"