This is an annotated Beppe Severgnini.

And what might that be, you may well ask if you’re not up to date on Italy’s culture today.

Severgnini is one of Italy’s most celebrated journalists and satirists. He writes a column for Italy’s top newspaper, Corriere della Sera, he is an Op-Ed writer for the New York Times, and earlier in his career he was the correspondent from Italy for the Economist. In 2001, he was awarded an OBE from Queen Elizabeth. There’s much more to Severgnini’s resume but if I don’t stop now I’ll have to send him a bill.

You may or may not know that all is not as well as it might be in Italy at present in terms of economic rosiness. I leave you to search for the details on your own, but I can tell you that the eloquent hand wringing of many Italians has increased to the level of Lady Macbeth and her spot removal problem. And not infrequently these Italians are blaming themselves for the hard times.

An example: Recently while out to dinner with some friends at a neighborhood trattoria specializing in fresh fish dishes, I heard one of them mutter between bites of the delicious roasted Rombo overlaid with a crosta of potato she had ordered, “How can we Italians be so good at food and so stupid about politics?” Her fellow country folk at the table immediately made noises of agreement.

In a recent Corriere column, Severgnini chose to provide some inoculation against this outbreak of nationwide self-flagellation. He titled it “100 Reasons we are happy to be Italian.” He offered it as “a list from the heart” to counterpoint the gloom-mongering. It’s a good list, especially for those who are fans of Italy and its inhabitants. But for the many who haven’t the time or patience to read a hundred of anything, I’ve pared the plaudits down to my favorite five.

Here they are, with their original numbering from Severgnini’s list:

5. Because no one else is so skillful at turning a crisis into a party

7. Because we have good taste. We instinctively recognize beauty

9. Because we’re interesting. Tourists, business travelers and Angel Merkel are never bored with Italians around.

28. Because we have our head in Europe, our midriff exposed and our feet dangling in the sea

88. Because we love exceptions and occasionally remember there are rules

And now my annotation.

Numbers five, seven, and nine are self-evident, in my opinion, so much so that if subjected to a planet-wide referendum on their validity they would probably get a happy nod of approval from all the tourists who’ve visited the country. But numbers twenty-eight and eighty-eight may merit some commentary.

Regarding twenty-eight, I submit to you that it is wonderful primarily because you need to be an Italian to know what it means. But the metaphor is interesting, and I’m happy to accept Severgnini’s word that the declaration is true.

As to number eighty-eight, I can here offer the perspective of a former Californian, married to an Italian, and resident in Italy for 13 plus years. Not long ago, husband and I were chauffeuring two friends from San Francisco from their hotel in Rome to a seaside restaurant for lunch. Though the fact isn’t indispensable to this anecdote, one of these friends is a Superior Court judge. So that may be why he mentioned wryly at one point that during the previous 20 minutes, he had ticked off five stop signs that my husband had breezed by without even slowing down.

Which brings me to the second half of Severgnini’s number eighty-eight statement – “…and occasionally remember there are rules.” In the US and in some other parts of the Western world, as we all know who live or are from there, the stop sign is sacrosanct (perhaps too much so — the Italians I know find the four-way stop a particular source of hilarity). And if that slips your mind too often, a police officer will soon remind you, or at the very least your fellow drivers will.

Not so in Italy, generally speaking. For many drivers, I’ve noticed, most stop signs seem to be invisible considering the zero effect they have on slowing forward motion. In my first years here, I often tried (futilely) to elicit some illumination from my husband about this habitual disregard of the stop sign. What was most confusing to me is that sometimes he does observe stop signs. So what is the determining factor in this behavior?

Finally after some time passed I had my answer, though it arrived via intuition rather than via spousal comment. I realized that the stereotypical belief that Italians don’t observe rules isn’t true. Rather, as Severgnini points out, they “occasionally remember there are rules.” What he doesn’t mention, though — a reality I now accept with resignation as we continue to fly by stop signs — is that only Italians seem to know precisely what these rules are.

In this regard, I’ve decided to add one one more favorite from Severgnini’s longish list, number 92:

Because governing Italians is like herding cats (but cats have more personality than sheep).

Yes, and what would the world be without cats?

(Here’s the link to the full list: “100 reasons we are happy to be Italian” May 16, 2014, Corriere della Sera).

Today while reading T.S. Eliot’s (1945) essay “The Social Function of Poetry” I came across a rich passage of thought focusing on Europe, diversity and unity. It struck me as particularly relevant to aspects of the public conversation of our present time.

…I do not believe that the cultures of the several of Europe can flourish in isolation from each other. There have been, no doubt, in the past, high civilizations producing great art, thought and literature, which have developed in isolation. Of that I cannot speak with assurance, for some of them may not have been so isolated as at first appears. But in the history of Europe this has not been so. Even Ancient Greece owed much to Egypt, and something to the Asiatic frontiers; and in the relations of the Greek states to each other, with their different dialects and different manners, we may find a reciprocal influence and stimulus analogous to that of the countries of Europe upon each other.

But the history of European literature will not show that any has been independent of the others; rather that there has been a constant give and take, and that each has in turn, from time to time, been revitalized by stimulation from outside. A general “autarky” in culture simply will not work: the hope of perpetuating the culture of any country lies in communication with others.

But if separation of cultures within the unity of Europe is a danger, so also would be a unification which led to uniformity. The variety is as essential as the unity. For instance, there is much to be said, for certain limited purposes, for a universal lingua franca such as Esperanto or Basic English. But supposing that all communication between nations was carried on in such an artificial language, how imperfect it would be! Or rather, it would be wholly inadequate in some respects, and there would be a complete lack of communication in others.

Poetry is a constant reminder of all the things that can only be said in one language, and are untranslatable. The “spiritual” communication between people and people cannot be carried on without the individuals who take the trouble to learn at least one foreign language as well as one can learn any language but one’s own, and who consequently are able, to a greater or less degree, to “feel” in another language as well as in their own. And one’s understanding of another people, in this way, needs to be supplemented by the understanding of those individuals among that people who have gone to the pains to learn one’s own language.

 

A note about the citation: I have broken this excerpt into paragraphs for easier reading, and placed quotations around some words that were italicized in the original.

Though these are the days of clouds and rain in Italy, on Sunday the organizers of the International Orchid Exhibition in the village of Monte Porzio Catone, near Rome, were granted lots of sunshine and fair temperatures for their annual celebration of the exotic blooms.

We dropped by for a few hours to admire the brilliantly vivid displays of exhibitors. I posted my photos of the event at Demotix.com — you can see them here.

Fall days don’t come much more beautiful than the one we had in Rome yesterday. A gently warm temperature and perfect sunshine created irresistible weather for spending time outdoors.

We headed off for a waterfront lunch and a leisurely meander along the wide boardwalk at one of the Eternal City’s best kept secrets at this time of year, its beachfront Ostia Lido.

It reminded me of a similar beautiful day we spent there in January of last year. Here’s a re-post of a slide show I put together of some photos I shot then.

Notwithstanding the disgruntlement of my beloved Speck (above), I am happy to announce the publication of my new book, “How to Live in Italy: Essays on the charms and complications of living in paradise.”

The book is a collection of essays that I’ve written during the past eleven years of living in this uniquely beautiful and bewildering place on the planet. The book is available in print edition and as a Kindle ebook. Pricing is user-friendly and, of course, it’s listed on Amazon.com.

From reviewers and colleagues some favorable words:

Rebecca Helm-Ropelato’s book is about the enjoyment of differences, of what they tell us about others and, above all, what they tell us about ourselves. This voyage of discovery of her other home looks afresh at everything we take for granted, from landscapes, architecture and clothes, through languages, ways of expressing ourselves and of being with others, to food, drink, and pride in what we are and what we do. From Italy, with love.” Back cover blurb, MADALENA CRUZ-FERREIRA, a multilingual scholar, educator and parent.

Rebecca opens by describing herself as an ex-pat. Literally she is correct, but philosophically she’s wrong. It’s that word ‘culture’ which is the giveaway. Having married an Italian and set up home near Rome she has definitively given up her ex-pat status by embracing her new way of life. This is wonderfully expressed in her approach to learning the Italian language – ‘Sheer hard work’ as Rebecca suggests – ‘it also helps me to see my own language in a fresh light and with greater appreciation. Replace the word ‘language’ with ‘culture’ and you have the essence of not being an ex-pat. From Philip Curnow, “Angels, and No Demons” Delicious Italy blog.

Why another book on the pleasures, oddities, and difficulties of living in Italy? It might seem that every stone, ancient and modern, in Bell’Italia has been overturned by every stripe of writer on earth, but for those of us who love Italy–whether through living there, visiting, or even just reading about it from afar–Rebecca Helm-Ropelato’s How to Live in Italy will stir our interest for the varied, rich, exasperating, wonderful life in Bell’Italia… Helm-Ropelato gives us a wonderfully restrained look at today’s Italy, with a self-deprecating attitude that is winning because it is so honest. From Gregorio, Amazon reader comment.

All this tooting of my own horn has exhausted me so I’ll stop here.

For more information about How to Live in Italy, and where to buy, the book website is here. To see the print and Kindle ebook listing on Amazon, go here  (or see the book’s widget here on the right-hand column for more options.)

Special promotion: How to Live in Italy is available today and tomorrow to download free as a Kindle ebook (USA time zones apply).

As she was in the beginning (Angela Merkel)

What is the nitty gritty of what precisely is happening with the European Union — the Europe project — in these days?  An answer to that puzzle is set out clearly, shortly and sweetly by Irishman Jason O’Mahony in a blog post today.

O’Mahony rests the matter of Europe’s future squarely on the shoulders of the remarkable Angela, the current Chancellor  of Germany.  Merkel faces a  very clear choice between saving Europe or destroying Europe, O’Mahony argues.  Check out what he has to say here.

My favorite part of the post, though, is this excerpt.

British eurosceptics constantly remark that the euro was a political project, as if that is a killer argument. It was. It was supposed to be, and whilst it is malfunctioning from bad design, the fact with European integration is that it has been the great success story of post-war Europe.

A few days ago in an email conversation with my daughter I mentioned that the political and economic turmoil in Europe had intensified this past two weeks. Writing back, she asked me to send her a few links to news stories that could give her some insight into the situation.

Harrumph, I mumbled to myself, I wish I could ask the same of some wise news guru.

And I suspect I’m not the only one. It’s much more difficult than it should be to find news reports that aren’t simplistic re-cyclings of various prejudicial stereotypes or political ideologies posing as expertise.

As an example, just last week economist Bill Black strongly criticized the mighty New York Times‘s coverage of the European crisis as “overwhelmingly written from the German perspective.”  You can read the post here on the Naked Capitalism website.

So when I found these two videos this morning featuring Harvard University economist Richard Parker talking about Greece, I decided to post them. Parker has a bit of an inside track on Greece especially. He served as an adviser to former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou from 2009 to 2011 (see bio).

In the first video (click on screenshot above), Parker advises against falling for easy answers “about the character or moral values of other people to explain a crisis of the kind we’re seeing in Greece.” He then quickly refutes some of the worst stereotypes against the country that are found in daily news headlines.

I particularly liked Parker’s summing up comment because he calls for citizen activism as part of the resolution. Here it is:

Now in Europe as in the United States there have been attempts to rein in the power of an unregulated financial system. But it’s very difficult to do. So the way forward in the 21st century in the wake of this crisis that we’re still living through is going to require a kind of intelligence and vision that transcends national borders. And that will have to come in part from citizens demanding behavior of public leaders of all sorts that moves us to a new world.

This video is a concise three and a half minutes and was posted online earlier this week (May 14).

The second video I found, via Googling, is a six-minute excerpt of a lecture Parker gave last October to the World Affairs Council of Connecticut. In this video, the economist traces step by step how the Greek economic crisis began some years ago to its current deepening turmoil.

Yesterday, Italy lost one of its multi-generational popular music icons, Lucio Dalla. The singer-composer was on tour in Switzerland, according to news reports, cause of death a heart attack. Dalla was only three days away from his 69th birthday.

Outside of Italy, Dalla may be bestknown as the composer of the song “Caruso” which was recorded by several musicians, most prominently Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, and Josh Groban.

Click on the screenshot above to see a video of Dalla performing “Caruso” with Pavarotti in 1992.

It is a brilliant stroke by Romano Prodi in an interview yesterday with Spiegel Online International when he parries a challenge from the interviewer by asking bluntly “Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?”

The interviewer has just referred to German PM Angela Merkel’s stated opposition to eurobonds, and to Germans’ fear that it is primarily Germany that will carry the financial burden for the bonds. Excerpt:

SPIEGEL: …By now, Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be completely isolated, with all partners exerting huge pressure on her. Will that be effective?

Prodi: That is the way politics works. But let’s be rational. Is Germany better off with the euro or without it?

SPIEGEL: With the euro.

In a later section of the interview, the subject of a “two-speed” Europe comes up. Here also, Prodi offers an interesting perspective. And he goes on to talk about a major criticism that he says he hears increasingly voiced about Europe’s power globally.

You can read the full Q&A here, which also includes some discussion of the current and past state of things in Italy.

I do wish Prodi hadn’t retired from Italian politics (and I’m not the only one).

Surely I’m not the only one to take notice that the bulk of the doomsday talk these days about the imminent fall of the euro is coming either from outside Europe or from eurosceptics.

An underlying assumption of this dire talk, perhaps, may be the idea that eurozone citizens are so discontented that they are demanding return to national currencies. But where is there evidence of this?  Even most Greeks, supposedly mad as hell at EU leadership, reportedly want to stay with the euro (see here, for example).

And, although it’s admittedly an anecdotal report, I can say I’ve not heard or seen either a peep or a scribble of any such San Pietro! let’s return to the lira talk here in Italy either. That is, except for the usual disgruntled voices of the northern far right who, more or less, want to exit everything including the southern half of their own country.

And then this just now in the UK Guardian‘s live blog on the eurozone crisis:

1.47pm: Almost four out of five Germans believe the 17-nation single currency will survive, according to poll for ZDF television. Some 78% of people asked said the euro would survive despite its problems while 56% felt chancellor Angela Merkel was doing a good job of managing the crisis. That’s an improvement on a similar poll in October which had her approval rating at 45%.

How much of a role does the European public play in the rise or fall of the euro? I have no idea really, given the murky fog that constitutes most financial reporting, and the politicians’ backroom political jockeying. But if eurozone voters’ support is needed to drive the currency into collapse, seems to me that’s a non-starter.

Impressively concise assessment of what it means to belong to a currency union — in this case the Euro — offered this week by Protesilaos Stavrou, a young European studies student from Cypress (“Should Germany leave the euro and let others crash and burn?” Aug 27, 2011).

Excerpt:

Countries in a currency union are interconnected, since they have first abolished all or most of the trade barriers between them, their economies have practically merged into a single market and their banking sector, as well as other important sectors of the economy, are organically linked. Severing a part of this “organism” will doom both the part and the whole just as if a vital organ is removed from the human body where both die.

The reason that is true is because the country that opts out will trigger a chain effect in the banking sector and in all other sectors it can influence, which will see private banks and other corporations falling one after the other just like in a domino.

Read full post here.  (Saw this link at Bloggingportal.eu)

A Book Review

That the superrich across the globe are in the process of stealing most of the world’s wealth and resources from the rest of us is by now common knowledge among those who aren’t persisting in turning a blind eye. That superrich defined is the top 1 percent approximately (or 0.01 percent more accurately).

But for those who still don’t know about this mindboggling raid on the human planet and its population, I hope you will take a look at two recent sources of information that describe the process chapter and verse.

The first, thoroughly documented and alarming, is the book “Winner-Take-All Politics” – the authors are two political science professors in American universities (Yale and UC Berkeley), Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

As an example of what they are writing about, here’s a 1954 quote they cite from President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican):

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt…, a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Unfortunately, as Hacker and Pierson demonstrate over and over in their book, Eisenhower was wrong about his central point. One of the two US major political parties (and the other one also to a huge extent) is persisting in doing just what he described as impossible, and that party is very much still part of political history in the making.

A second source of information about the superrich and their grand theft of all there is to have is a recent article in the UK’s Guardian – “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage” by Peter Wilby (May 18, 2011).

Excerpt:

That is the most important point about what has happened to incomes in Britain and America during the neoliberal era: the very rich are soaring ahead, leaving behind not only manual workers – now a diminishing minority – but also the middle-class masses, including doctors, teachers, academics, solicitors, architects, Whitehall civil servants and, indeed, many CEOs who don’t run FTSE 100 companies, to say nothing of the marketing, purchasing, personnel, sales and production executives below them.

Neither Hacker and Pierson in their book nor Wilby in his Guardian article play favorites with political labels. The superrich driving this ruthless and barbaric raid on the planet and their fellow human beings evidently don’t care whether you call yourself a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist, Anarchist or general apolitical layabout. To paraphrase the pop song, they just want your money, honey, they don’t need your love.

Again, I highly recommend reading these two exposès. What you choose to do once you are aware of the real state of affairs is, of course, your choice. But this is not the time to stand silently by on the sidelines.

Following the recommendation of a friend, this evening I listened to a live streaming of a discussion with Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari (and here). Afterwards, curious about Cacciari and the interesting ideas I’d just heard, I went Googling for more.

A solid gold nugget I unearthed is a Q&A interview with the philosopher published last summer in a Barcelona magazine (Interview with Massimo Cacciari: “‘I am many’, says Europe. We have to be capable of being many”  by  Josep Casals and Alicia García Ruiz, Barcelona Metropolis, July – Sept 2010).

Much of the interview was about Europe – what it is, was, can be. Fascinating!  Excerpt:

Q. …Europe is a question you have addressed in many of your works. Europe is a laboratory for philosophical experimentation. European thought, and thought about Europe, is, today, as much of a philosophical problem as it is an intellectual cartography. You have defined the problem of the starting point, of the search for a single initial constant, as a central problem of philosophy, and it might also be considered a political problem in relation to the idea of the origin of Europe. Is the origin of Europe a problem of the starting point for political thought, that is, is the origin of Europe an identity or a plurality?

Europe has been a difficult problem to define from the very outset. One need only think of the mythological figure of Europe. Europe was a woman who came from the other side of the Mediterranean, the modern Lebanon, which was Phoenicia. The very name Europe is not of Indo-European or Indo-Germanic origin. It probably has a Mesopotamian, Sumerian or Semitic origin. Europe has been from its very beginnings a melting pot of energies, identities and differences. Just think of the Greeks. They felt they were one family but, in fact, they were cities that were at war with each other from dawn to dusk, and yet, they really felt they were a family. Olympia, Delphi… were common places (with common gods), but totally autonomous one from the other. Where does it begin and where does it end?

Europe has always engendered itself. Europe is a task. Europe is a problem. Europe always declines itself in the future tense. Europe will be, will be and will be. This means that Europe is lived like this: as a task, a mission. We must always be building Europe. And it can be built with hegemonic intentions, as we have seen throughout European history: Charlemagne, Charles V, Napoleon, Hitler – they all attempted to exercise hegemonic power over Europe. But every time someone has tried it, Europe has got rid of them, she has not wanted anyone who wanted one Europe. Europe is not one, they are many. Like us, like you, like me … That is what Europe is like: “I am many,” says Europe. We must be able to make of ourselves many. And today more than ever, Europe must be able to make of herself many. For alongside the traditional European families, there are in Europe today families that until a generation ago were not here. Or perhaps they had been in Europe many centuries ago. This is the case of Islam which, in Spain, was European but, from the late 15th century onwards, ceased to be so. And now it is European again, but in a form that is completely different from that of six or seven centuries ago. But Europe today must understand that her origins are many and she should be able to make of herself many once again; in a peaceful way, not in the controversial way that happened so often down the centuries. This peaceful form would be the confederation, the union, of the European peoples, but also with the new people who come to Europe. In just fifteen years, in my region, in Veneto, the population with non-European origins has gone from zero to 15%. Therefore, we must learn to make of ourselves many. But this is nothing new, Europe has thought of herself in this way since her origins.

Read the full interview here.

Writing with a fighting voice, wellknown Irish journalist and author Fintan O’Toole sadly and scaldingly recounts the current Irish government’s disgrace and surrender, in an article yesterday for openDemocracy (“Ireland: the challenge of failure” Fintan O’Toole, Nov 23, 2010).

Excerpt:

Sovereignty is a bit like a clock whose constant ticking you notice only when it stops. It becomes conspicuous in its absence. Most of the time, in an interdependent world where no nation can exist on its own, it seems a rather fuzzy concept. But it becomes crystal clear when you don’t have it.

There is nothing abstract in the sudden reality of officials from the EU and the IMF poring over the books in Merrion Street and the prospect of all big decisions on government spending and taxation having to be approved by those same bodies for years to come. A simple rule of thumb for a sovereign state is that it – and it alone – makes its own decisions about taxation and spending. For the foreseeable future, Irish governments will not pass this test.

O’Toole’s article offers an inside view of the pain and humiliation an Irish citizen is going through these days. Read full piece here.

Italy has a reputation for lagging behind in its citizenry’s embrace of the Internet (see here, for an example). It’s true that things could certainly be better online-wise, but still the country does rank in the top 15 countries worldwide in Internet users, according to a recent European Travel Commission report. And it shows online usage steadily rising.

Nonetheless, as the report also shows, the percentage of the Italian population online is only 51.7 percent (30,026 million). That compares to 68.9 percent in France, 79.1 percent in Germany, and 77.3 percent in the USA.

In Italy, one online sector where some promising new developments are underway is journalism, according to an article by Federica Cocco today at OWNI.eu (“Italian journos search for escape route in oppressive job market” Nov 17, 2010).

Cocco reports on some of the current hardships many Italian journalists are facing in traditional media. As a solution, she writes, some of them are “trying to find refuge in the web.”

According to a 2010 survey by Human Highway and Liquida, Italy now counts 1.7 million bloggers – half a million more than last year. The study also concluded that 23.1% of the 24 million Italian netizens read blogs regularly, and the majority of them focus on current affairs.

Cocco also reports on the recent launch of two notable online news reporting websites.

Read the full article here.

At the end of a short interview early this week on a CNN news show, the anchor Charles Hodson asked Jamil Anderlini, the Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times, what was the point, the purpose of this week’s “enormous offensive, this diplomatic offensive by the Chinese in Europe?”

Hodson was referring to the official visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to Europe this week. The premier won headlines with his favorable remarks about the Eurozone. They included a pledge to support the Euro, and an announcement during a visit to Greece that China will buy government bonds to try and aid the struggling country (see here and here).

Anderlini, after offering his analysis of the reasons for China’s proposed largesse to Europe, summed up with this:

“Well I think what you’re seeing is, China is obviously now the world’s second largest economy, it’s the biggest energy user, it’s the biggest emitter of carbon and greenhouse gases in the world, and it really is – China is really rising very rapidly on the world stage, both economically, militarily, politically.

And I think, you know there’s a re-evaluation going on of the traditional foreign policy in China which is — it was laid out a couple of decades ago by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping — and that policy was that China should hide its brilliance, hide its light, and bide its time. But I think China has really reached the point where it’s re-evaluating that policy and that strategy.”

But Europe wasn’t the only target audience of what amounted to a media blitz this week of the European, Anglo-American world by the Chinese premier. Wen Jiabao also sat for an hour-long CNN interview for U.S. television with superstar journalist Fareed Zakaria.

Pointing out that the Chinese premier rarely gives interviews to Western journalists, Zakaria introduced the session by also listing some of China’s recent power moves in international relations.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

In his opening questions, Zakaria asked Wen Jiabao about the worldwide financial crisis, about China itself, and whether Chinese leadership has lost faith in the U.S.  The premier responded with a diplomatically amiable comment about President Obama and then spoke about his own country:

In the face of the financial crisis, any person who has a sense of responsibility towards the country and towards the entire human race, should learn lessons from the financial crisis. As far as I am concerned, the biggest lesson that I have drawn from the financial crisis is that in managing the affairs of a country, it is important to pay close attention to addressing the structural problems in the economy.

China has achieved enormous progress in its development, winning acclaim around the world. Yet I was one of the first ones to argue that our economic development still lacks balance, coordination and sustainability. This financial crisis has reinforced my view on this point. On the one hand we must tackle the financial crisis, on the other we must continue to address our own problems. And we must do these two tasks well at the same time and this is a very difficult one…

Later Zakaria asked Wen Jiabao about the much reported, and widely criticized censorship of the Internet by Chinese officials. Somewhat surprisingly, the premier praised the freedom of expression and freedom to criticize the government allowed on the Internet in China.  Zakaria challenged this appraisal, citing his own experience of the many restrictions he has encountered when he himself has visited China.

Wen Jiabao didn’t refute Zakaria’s assessment but responded:

“I believe I and all the Chinese people have such a conviction that China will make continuous progress and the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible. I hope that you will be able to gradually see the continuous progress of China.”

In the last segment of the interview Zakaria mentioned a series of speeches that Wen has given in the last few months. He mentioned one in particular in which the premier said that along with economic reform, China must keep doing political reform. Zakaria then said that a lot of people he knows in China have told him that there has been a lot of economic reform but not much political reform: “What do you say to people who listen to your speeches and they say we love everything Wen Jiabao says but we don’t see the actions of political reform?”

After a preliminary comment on the importance of the ruling governing party being faithful to the constitution and its laws, Wen Jiabao ended with this:

I have summed up my political ideals into the following four sentences. To let everyone lead a happy life with dignity, to let everyone feel safe and secure, to let the society be one with equity and justice, and to let everyone have confidence in the future. In spite of the various discussions and views within society, and in spite of some resistance, I will act in accordance with these ideals unswervingly and advance within the realm of my capabilities political restructuring.

“I would like to tell you the following two sentences to reinforce my case on this or my view on this point. That is, I will not fall in spite of the strong wind and harsh rain, and I will not yield til the last day of my life.

To see the full interview, go here.

When it comes to figuring out complex things in today’s world, Michael Lewis has proven himself better than most at doing so. Along with this, he has an uncanny sense for the perfect doorway into a narrative, and an eye (and ear) for the telling detail that raises the bar to new highs.

The reading public must agree — most of his ten or so books have made the New York Times bestseller list (see Vanity Fair bio and Wikipedia). And his 2006 book, “The Blind Side,” was made into a hit movie of the same name that earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture (2010).

But coming away from reading the more than 11,000 word feature about Greece by Lewis in next month’s Vanity Fair, I was struck by the series of questions he posed — and left unanswered — in the piece’s final paragraph (“Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds” Oct 1, 2010).

Two, for example:

Will Greece default?…

Even if it is technically possible for these people [Greeks] to repay their debts, live within their means, and return to good standing inside the European Union, do they have the inner resources to do it?

To research the Vanity Fair article, Lewis spent some time in Greece,and interviewed some key figures and government workers in the national financial drama underway there. It makes for interesting reading — the full article is here.

Also interesting is the magazine’s companion Q&A with Lewis about the piece. Here you can read some opinions he has of the possible economic prospects of various other countries in Europe, in particular Germany.

My favorite segment  was a question asking Lewis to compare specific European countries to major baseball teams in the U.S. Of course, unless you’re a baseball fan, the metaphoric word play is illusive (and I can’t be of much help here — the sports world is certainly Greek to me).

One sample, though, was more explicit. His description of Italy — he compared the country to the baseball team The Marlins — is generous and apt, I think. He said:

Even though Italy is in financial trouble right now, like the Marlins are always in financial trouble one way or another, it still somehow feels like a successful place. Italy is this giant wild card; they can win the series at any point.

Italy certainly can do with a good word just about now. And maybe I’m biased, but I do favor such optimism. And I do so hope Lewis is as astute about this as he has been about so many other things. Vediamo.

One last glance back at the World Economic Forum panel discussion last week that I wrote a couple of posts about. This time I want to highlight some interesting wordplay there.

The minor verbal tussle sprang from reaction to the title of the panel discussion — “America in the Asian Century.”

First comment came from panel host Steve Clemons who opined that, for various reasons, he prefers to think of it as “America, China, Europe in a really, really messy century.”

Soon after Professor Moon Chung-In from Korea argued, instead, that it will be an “American-Asian century.” And then later, another panel member predicted that it would be, rather, a global century.

This all came back to mind this morning while I was reading yesterday’s Huffington Post blog post by Michael Brenner. He rather acerbically quoted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declaring earlier this month that we are at another American moment. (Video below)

At least, and that’s rather exceptional, Nouriel Roubini spreads the gloom around evenhandedly. Writing an op-ed piece this week for Project Syndicate about problems of the Eurozone, he grounds the assessment in a disapproving scowl at most of the world’s biggest economies (“The Eurozone’s Autumn Hangover” Sept 15, 2010):

.. all the factors that will lead to a slowdown of growth in most advanced economies in the second half of 2010 and 2011 are at work in Germany and the rest of the eurozone. Fiscal stimulus is turning into fiscal austerity and a drag on growth. The inventory adjustment that drove most of the GDP growth for a few quarters is complete, and tax policies that stole demand from the future (“cash for clunkers” all over Europe, etc.) have expired…

Roubini’s primary concern seems to be that European leaders have largely postponed having to account for Europe’s economic problems, rather than finding a real resolution for them:

In the periphery, the trillion-dollar bailout package and the non-stressful “stress tests” kicked the can down the road, but the fundamental problems remain: large budget deficits and stocks of public debt that will be hard to reduce sufficiently, given weak governments and public backlash against fiscal austerity and structural reforms; large current-account deficits and private-sector foreign liabilities that will be hard to rollover and service; loss of competitiveness (driven by a decade-long loss of market share in labor-intensive exports to emerging markets, rising unit labor costs, and the strength of the euro until 2008); low potential and actual growth; and massive risks to banks and financial institutions (with the exception of Italy).

You can read the whole essay here.

One of the most interesting and puzzling findings, for me, of the New Transaltantic Trends survey just released are the widely divergent transatlantic views of Americans and Europeans on the rise of Asia:

EU and U.S. respondents were divided about the role Asia would play in global affairs. Seven-in-ten respondents (71%) in America found it very likely that China will exert strong leadership in the future, while only a third of Europeans (34%) thought the same scenario is very likely.

That’s a gigantic perception gap between the two groups. Why? Haven’t a clue.

Still puzzling over this divide, I came across a video of a panel discussion yesterday at the World Economic Forum meeting now underway in Tianjin, China. Hosted by Steve Clemons, the panel discussion was titled “America in the Asian Century.”  The panel members included public figure heavyweights:

Cui Liru, President, Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International Relations; Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times; Taro Kono, Acting Secretary-General, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan; Moon Chung-In, Professor of Political Science, Yonsei University, Korea; Charles E. Morrison, President, East-West Centre, USA; and Kurt Tong, Senior Official to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, US Department of State.

Highly recommended watching!  Unless you’re already an expert on the subject, the discussion is illuminating and thought-provoking.

Just a couple of quotes (many to choose from), this first one from Professor Moon Chung-In, of Korea:

We are trapped in a kind of cognitive dissonance between old inertia and new reality. We all know American power is declining, okay, yet we try and recognize America as a continuing power, shaping everything in this part of the world…

And from host Steve Clemons:

One of the challenges for the United States is that to much of the rest of the world, it looks like the General Motors of nations. It’s big, it has a ton of assets, you always hear America has all these bases, this power, this capacity.

But when it comes to where it’s anticipated to be 20 years from now, it looks like GM. China has looked like the Google of countries. In other words, power is based on future expectation, much like the stock market…