Time magazine has Mario Monti on the cover of the current issue, with the provocative title, "why Mario Monti is the most important man in Europe." Above is the interview that accompanies the article, in which you can see that Monti has an excellent command of our fair language, albeit with a marked accent. The most significant part to me is when he agrees that Italians must make structural changes in their cultural and social life to effect economic improvement, instead of projecting all their faults onto government. This tendency is so widespread that there is an old saying: "Piove, governo ladro." It's raining, the government is crooked. Although right about now they're blaming the government for the snow, not the rain.
Unfortunately, the article is available online only to Time subscribers, drats. I'll have to read it in the library. In the meantime, Monti met with Obama in Washington today, receiving lavish praise from the Prez.
