A major cruiseliner, the Costa Concordia, cruised too close to the Italian coast last week. Having run aground against a series of rocks beneath the waves, the ship now bobs halfway above the surface of the sea, an embarrassment to good intentions gone terribly wrong with unforeseen consequences.
The captain, who was not drunk at the time, wanted to hail all the land-farers in the country, but his design to get close prevented the liner from getting anywhere.
The disturbing trend in the wake of this negligent and negligible disaster is that another ship is sinking, one that also cruised into dangerous waters attempting to please the Italian people on land. This second disaster is getting far less media coverage than the cruiseliner, but deserves far greater attention nonetheless.
The second ship is the very nation of Italy, which is sinking, drowning beneath a two and half trillion dollar national debt. The Italian government, fraught with division and dysfunction, has provided generous handouts to its depleted and depleting population. Low birth rates, high taxes, little economic growth, and mafia-allied thuggery throughout the nation have undermined consumer confidence and impoverished the Italian state to the brink of bankruptcy and default.
Unlike the Costa Concordia, if the state of Italy sinks, her insolvency threatens to take down the rest of the European Community and the Euro.
The loss of passengers off the Italian Coast is a disaster. The loss of one nation, and an entire continent, to fiscal chaos is a tragedy with repercussions that will last for decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment