Originally published in Italian on Il Fatto Quotidiano by Gisella Ruccia
“Greece is screwing us out of 40 billion euros that we’ll never see again, so much for Renzi’s sweetheart. It will never reimburse its debts.” There are Alberto Forchielli’s words, president of Osservatorio Asia, in an interview with Alessandro Milan of 24 Mattina on Radio24. The businessman, who ironically calls Greece’s minister of finance Varoufakis “Skarciofakis,” observes: “Skarciofakis is the poor man’s Bertinotti, a windbag, this at the default will finish us for real. He goes around to conferences, he’s never presented a serious reconstruction plan to fix the absurd situation in Greece, where 40% of the GDP is public stipends, awards for punctuality and ‘golden spinsters.’ There are people drowning in the ocean dreaming of Europe and those, like in Greece, who are drowning in debt cheating Europe.” Forchielli also commended on the tragedy that occurred recently south of Sicily: “the immigration emergency is an epochal case. Some move to stem the flow is necessary. In the last three months, the number of immigrants has reached 20,000 people; the Bay of Pigs didn’t even see such numbers. Renzi? Today he’s on the first page of the Financial Times putting in a great show. My opinion of him hasn’t changed, but in this occasion he’s getting off easy. In words, let’s be clear.” And he points his finger at European policies: “the real drama is that Europe has very few capacities. We fill our mouths saying that we’re the greatest economy on Earth, but in the meantime we don’t have drones or detection systems for barges. Then, in the end what does this great Europe do as soon as there’s an emergency like this? It calls the United States. Renzi went to Obama, asked for drones, and Obama said: “buy them.” The entrepreneur is critical of the Milan Expo: “it’s an old idea made with new debts. The first expo happened 150 years ago. An we, the hosts, are more behind than anyone else. It’s like inviting guests for dinner and not having electricity to boil the water for pasta.”
