Mitt Romney botches another Italian job as anger lingers over Bain coup

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Mitt Romney botches another Italian job as anger lingers over Bain coup

Eurozone remark prompts criticism in Italy after controversy over Fiat claim and Bain deal for telephone-directory company

Posted by
John Hooper in Rome
Thursday 1 November 2012 17.20 EDT guardian.co.uk

What is it about Mitt Romney and Italians? The Republican presidential candidate seems to be possessed of a sublime capacity for, well, pissing them off.

He was at it again on Thursday in Roanoke, Virginia, where he was reported by the Italian news agency Ansa as having asked his audience: "If you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking of starting up a business, you need to ask yourself: Is America on the same road as Greece? Are we on the path to an economic crisis like that we're seeing in Europe, in Italy and Spain?"

Italians, who thought they'd just put the worse of the eurozone crisis behind them, are not exactly thrilled at being mentioned in the same breath as the Greeks. The Republican candidate's remarks were picked up by news websites here and given front-page prominence. La Repubblica ran an aggrieved comment from one of its correspondents in the US:

"The American right needs enemies. Italy, along with Spain and Greece, is the ideal bogeyman … the negative paradigm, the model of all that should not be done in terms of statism and nanny-statery."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/nov/01/mitt-romney-italy-eurozone-bain

[justiceischeap]

1. Is there a foreign nation he hasn't offended now? nt

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Botswanaland?

Sri Lanka?

The Grand Duchy of Fenwick?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

2. Mittoplacy! He doesn't have to leave American shores to put his golden foot in his mouth.

[SoapBox]

3. Dirty Mittens is simply a mess...

What an idiot.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

5. Signor Romney, Lei e` uno stronzo che non capisce un cazzo

During Bush II, we had freedom fries. With Romney, what are we having? Cheese-and-tomato doughy rounds of justice?

As some of you may know, I am an Italian citizen by birth who moved to the U.S. due to my father's company establishing a subsidiary in North Carolina. It was supposed to be a temporary assignment and then we were to move on to Brazil. Well, that didn't happen. 25 years later and college and husbands in between, I am still here.

I have been lucky enough to experience both countries on an intimate level. Both have their differences, their quirks, their things that I love and their things that I hate.

But what bothers me most is the ignorance about the reasons why countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, etc. are in trouble. First, they are in trouble for very different reasons and dynamics, though they do share one thing: governments which invested a lot of treasury funds into mortgage-backed securities from the U.S. which paid a fairly high interest rate up until the market crashed. Now, they are not worth much at all. So all these treasuries are suffering because what they hold is essentially valueless.

In Italy, tax evasion is a component - though not as prevalent as in Greece - and so is a vast underground 'economy' where a lot of business flows through the hands of organized crime. Organized crime in Italy is not like The Godfather or The Sopranos. It's more complex than that. It involves politicians, business people and the clergy in a big chess game of 'incentives' and 'favors' that don't encourage meritocracy, but nepotism and 'who you know.'

I could spend hours talking about what makes Italy different than Greece or Spain or Ireland or Portugal.

[julian09]

7. Tax evasion is right up R-MONEY's alley, he should run in Italy, next

[cosmicone]

8. Lei ha ragione.

Mio zio era il ambasciatore della India al'Italia e ho vissuto in Italia per diciotto estati

[Fuddnik]

6. If Spain invaded Italy from the rear....

Would Greece help?

[kardonb]

9. Rotme

He is such an ignoramus , with rampant foot in moth disease .

[truthisfreedom]

10. He's a bully who can't make a point without bashing somebody. Totally transparent.

Total bully.

[mile18blister]

11. We won't have to worry about going to war with Iran if Mittens wins.

We'll be too busy fighting Canada, Western Europe and all our other (former) allies.