This clearly looks like what is in store... Petrus Romanus has try to get through all this mess - as Rome is going to have to reshape the entire government ...

Update: 4/5/13

Italy to pay 40 billion euros of state debt to companies

By Catherine Hornby and Giuseppe Fonte | Reuters – 9 hrs ago

By Catherine Hornby and Giuseppe Fonte

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's caretaker government said on Saturday it would pay 40 billion euros ($52 billion) that the state owes to private companies over the next 12 months, while vowing to stick within the European Union's deficit limit.

The cabinet approved a decree intended to provide funds to cash-strapped firms and help tackle a deep recession in the euro zone's third-largest economy. But some industry groups said it would be difficult for businesses to claim their money despite the measures.

The massive backlog of bills unpaid by Italy's public administration has long been a complaint by companies, which are having difficulty raising credit from banks that are facing increasingly tight credit conditions themselves.

Prime Minister Mario Monti said on Saturday that delayed payment of bills was "an unacceptable situation that has been accepted for a long time".

Monti, who continues to lead a caretaker government after an inconclusive February election, has been in talks with the European Commission, which is concerned about the impact the decree will have on Italy's deficit and its massive public debt.

The measures were originally due to be approved on Wednesday but were delayed due to doubts over how they would be funded.

Monti said on Saturday the government was committed to remaining within the European Union's fiscal deficit ceiling of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

"Economic policy is not changing course, and we don't believe that to revive the economy you have to create more public debt," he told a news conference.

Last month the government eased its deficit target for this year to 2.9 percent of GDP from a previous target of 1.8 percent, partly to allow the payments to private firms.

Local authorities lacking their own resources to pay bills will receive money from the central state, and will be asked to set out a plan to reimburse it within 30 years.

"We have to follow a path between the two requirements: to help our economy to recover ... and to maintain budget discipline," Economy Minister Vittorio Grilli said. "It's a narrow path but a path that is absolutely viable."

Grilli said the government planned to examine its fiscal performance again in September and the Economy Ministry would be able to adopt corrective measures if the deficit looked likely to breach the "precautionary" limit of 2.9 percent.

PAYMENTS COULD START MONDAY

He said payments to companies could begin as soon as the decree is published officially, expected as early as Monday.

Grilli is due to meet European Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn in Brussels on Monday to explain the new measures, a government source told Reuters.

Monti said he was hopeful Rome would be able in May to exit the European Commission's excessive deficit procedure, which imposes corrective measures on countries that exceed the deficit threshold.

Italy has been in political limbo for weeks with no party able to form a government while economic problems pile up.

Public finance data so far this year has not been encouraging, with borrowing in the first quarter higher than the same period of 2012.

The government says settling the bills will provide a cash injection for an economy now stuck in its longest recession for 20 years.

But it has proved difficult to find the money to pay the companies, most in the healthcare and construction sectors, which have total accumulated claims estimated by the Bank of Italy at some 90 billion euros at the end of 2011.

Italy will raise its target for government bond issuance in 2013 and 2014 to pay off a portion of the outstanding debts, a senior Treasury source told Reuters on Thursday.

Some industry groups criticised the decree on Saturday.

"The proposed mechanism makes it almost impossible for firms to recover what they are owed," said Carlo Sangalli, head of the small business association Rete Imprese Italia.

Giorgio Squinzi, head of Italy's biggest employers' lobby, Confindustria, told SkyTG24 television he wanted to see the final text of the decree, but warned that Italy was in a "desperate crisis" and "immediate action" was necessary.

Italy's biggest trade union, CGIL, said the decree, though slow to arrive, was a "positive signal that could provide oxygen to an economic system in serious difficulties".

Thousands of small Italian firms have gone bust since the beginning of the year, many of them unable to pay employees as they wait for the state to settle bills up to two years old.

(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli and Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Petrus Romanus

In recent times, some interpreters of prophetic literature have drawn attention to the prophecies due to their imminent conclusion; if the list of descriptions is matched on a one-to-one basis to the list of historic popes since the prophecies' publication, the currently retiring pope, Benedict XVI (2005-2013), would correspond to the second to last of the papal descriptions, Gloria olivae (the glory of the olive). The last prophecy predicts the Apocalypse. The longest and final motto reads:

In persecutione extrema S.R.E. sedebit.Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oves in multis tribulationibus, quibus transactis civitas septicollis diruetur, & judex tremedus judicabit populum suum. Finis.

This may be translated into English as:

In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit [i.e., as bishop].
Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills [i.e. Rome] will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

Several historians and interpreters of the prophecies note that they leave open the possibility of unlisted popes between "the glory of the olive" and the final pope, "Peter the Roman."^[12]^[4] In the Lignum Vitae, the line In persecutione extrema S.R.E. sedebit. forms a separate sentence and paragraph of its own. While often read as part of the "Peter the Roman" prophecy, other interpreters view it as a separate, incomplete sentence explicitly referring to additional popes between "the glory of the olive" and "Peter the Roman".

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One. should look at how Rome will fall when a new Pope and a new leader vow to clean house. I pretty sure it's easy to picture come this election results in a couple days.

Comedian's Party Is Italian Wild Card

Movement's Leader Rebuffs Coalition Overture, but Its Parliamentarians Signal Willingness to Work

Eidon Press/Zuma Press

Beppe Grillo, at a rally Friday, and his party are a new force.

ROME—Italy's top politicians used to dismiss comedian-turned-political-activist Beppe Grillo as an extremist upstart who would do the country no good. Now, the joke is on them: Mr. Grillo is being wooed as the playmaker of Italy's fractured postelection political scene, and he's having none of it.

Increasingly, Mr. Grillo appears to be the only real winner of Italy's elections, and he and his scores of untested lawmakers could hold the key to Italy's next government—what it looks like, how long it lasts and what, if anything, it gets done.

Mr. Grillo's Five-Star Movement won 25% of the popular vote and is poised to seat 163 lawmakers in Italy's two house of Parliament. With 54 seats in the upper house, the Senate, his party is big enough to force Italy's leading coalition—led by the center-left Democratic Party—to form a government only if it can forge an alliance with Mr. Grillo or with its arch-enemies, the center-right coalition of Silvio Berlusconi.

European Pressphoto Agency

Marta Grande, 25, part of Mr. Grilli's party

The lawmakers in Mr. Grilli's party—the so-called Grillini—represent a shock to a clubby political scene made up largely of career lawmakers. The Grillini who are poised to become lawmakerson March 15 include unemployed university graduates, teachers and elder-care workers. This influx will make the new Parliament Italy's youngest ever, with the most women, according to the research arm of Coldiretti, a farming association.

Mr. Grillo has rejected the idea of an alliance with other parties. But because he isn't taking a seat in Parliament for himself, his role is more that of an orchestra director than an army general. It remains to be seen what party discipline will be brought to bear on his party's new lawmakers.

On Tuesday, Pier Luigi Bersani—whose Democratic Party won a majority of the votes in the lower house, giving it a mandate to try to form a government—said his party would try to form a government centered on passing laws to cut the costs of Italy's political establishment, to change Italy's electoral laws, to fight corruption and to introduce a law that would govern possible conflicts of interest between business and politics.

Mr. Bersani's words were interpreted as a soft overture to Mr. Grillo, whose platform included many of the same ideas.

On Wednesday, Mr. Grillo delivered a firm rebuke—calling Mr. Bersani a "dead man walking." Writing on his blog, he characterized Mr. Bersani as a "political stalker who is molesting the M5S [Five-Star Movement] with indecent proposals."

However, the failure to form a government with a secure parliamentary backing could send Italians back to the polls, an outcome that many Five-Star lawmakers say would represent a lost chance to enact their antiestablishment, pro-change platform.

On Mr. Grillo's blog—the central force of his campaign—supporters appeared split Wednesday on whether to agree to give Mr. Bersani the backing he needs to form a government. "I believe that allowing the creation of a new government is a duty to many voters," wrote a supporter identified as Natalino Lanzara. "Once the government is formed, then we can work on single proposals."

Mr. Grillo's lawmakers could, in fact, help install a government formed by Mr. Bersani without actually voting for it. According to Senate rules, lawmakers can walk out on a confidence vote, allowing the quorum in the Senate to be lowered and therefore effectively helping a confidence vote pass.

Some Grillini said they intend to be forceful backers of laws on a case-by-case basis.

"I certainly don't like back-room deals" to cobble together government majorities, said Stefano Vignaroli, a 36-year-old Roman movement member who was elected in the Chamber of Deputies this week. "But if a bill is good, I don't care who makes the proposal.... Why shouldn't I vote for it?"

Mr. Vignaroli, a video technician for Italian state-owned broadcaster RAI, was among the scores of Five-Star faithful who posted candidacy videos online. Those who received the most clicks from peers in voting late last year gained ballot spots, part of a "direct democracy" process orchestrated by Mr. Grilli.

Mr. Vignaroli, who says he didn't finish university when he became an activist to oppose a local landfill, said he is spending the days before he enters Parliament brushing up on economics and gay rights. He also had to buy a suit.

Five-Star's success is the biggest wave to hit Italian politics since Mr. Berlusconi entered the scene two decades ago. Mr. Grillo was banned from Italian television in the 1980s after jokes that overtly accused the country's politicians of routinely accepting bribes and looting the public purse. He went on to a successful career as a comedian, believing little has since changed in Rome. He set up his party just over three years ago, making inroads in regional and local elections in 2012.

In the elections held Sunday and Monday, his Five-Star Movement got the most votes of any single party—8.689 million, corresponding to 25.6% of the share. That topped the 8.644 million votes of the left-wing Democratic Party. The Democratic Party had, however, allied with smaller parties; together, the coalition came out ahead in the lower house of Parliament, which under Italian voting law handed it a majority of seats in that house.

The Grillini are likely to have enough force in parliament to introduce much legislation. These lawmakers said they aim to change the way Italy runs its politics—in particular making government and the day-to-day running of Parliament more transparent. The party wants bills in Parliament to be made public on the Web so that Italians can study them and comment them before they reach a vote. It also wants to allow full access to parliamentary committees.

"If we fail [to bring about transparency], then we'll see how to use all the technology we have today to force openness," said Francesco Molinari, a 48-year-old lawyer who was elected to the Senate for the movement from the region of Calabria.

Mr. Molinari, from a family of land laborers, said he decided in the 1980s that traditional parties were corrupt. He joined forces with Mr. Grillo in 2007, before the comedian had made his movement official.

"I was expecting a decent number of combative members to join me in parliament," added Mr. Molinari, a former Socialist. "But now that I see such a large number, our work will be even better."

.02¢

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

New Pope, Rome destroyed prophesy