The search for scapegoats

Dall' Economist: punto di vista interessante, as usual:

"Paradoxically, although euro membership has made it more urgent for Italy to deal with its structural faults, it may also have made it easier to avoid doing so, by cutting interest rates and eliminating exchange-rate crises. As the OECD puts it in its most recent report on Italy: “It is somewhat ironic that EMU membership...may, in effect, have relaxed the perceived need for structural adjustments on both the supply and fiscal sides.”

Something similar happened in Argentina after it adopted its convertibility plan: people started to believe that biting the bullet of a permanently fixed exchange rate was enough, on its own, to cure the economy's problems. In both countries, the new fixed-exchange-rate regime came to be seen as the end point of the reforms, rather than a prelude to broader structural adjustments. The need for these in Italy is now greater than ever.
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