Italy to Balance Budget? Cats to Sleep With Dogs?

This is awesome, great, spectacular news.

Italy: Budget To Be Balanced By 2013 - PM

November 30, 2011

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti intends for Italy to have a balanced budget by 2013, he said Nov. 30, Reuters reported. Italy will adopt a “vast political and economic operation” Dec. 5 that will implement the austerity measures decided by the previous government, he said. Monti said he will present a new finance law to his Cabinet on Dec. 5 that includes provisions for structural reform and measures to curb Italian debt in the short run, AGI reported.

We all have every reason to be skeptical, very skeptical...but if they can pull this off and maintain it over the longer term, the news is truly earth-shatteringly good. Actually, upon reflection there was never any reason to believe that any government in Europe couldn't pull this off. Their budgets are just a soup of bribes to various constituencies built up over decades, all of which are easily scaled back and/or eliminated. The notion that this was critical spending necessary for proper functioning of their economies was laughable. The ability was always there to balance the budget, just not the will. Now that power is not derived from actual voting, but by Eurocratic fiat, poiltical bribes need not be paid or honored (at least in Italy and Greece). It was hard to focus on that fact through all the Armageddon talk. Maybe Jon Corzine was on to something after all, his timing was just off...maybe...

This, along with the Spanish voting to take their medicine (theoretically), bodes very well for a non-Armageddonish resolution to the Euro crisis. Stay very tuned.