ANLYSIS OF AN ECONOMIC ARTICLE

The text I am going to analyse is an article taken from The Guardian, a British daily printed in London.

The title of the article is A Crisis of Capitalism, so the reader can expect that the text will be about economy, in particular about capitalism, what the term means and why it is connected to the word crisis.

As the reader can see in the first paragraph, the article is written by Riccardo Bellofiore who started stating that the financial problems of Europe and Italy are not home-grown but part of a global attack on labour. The introduction is followed by an image in which there is a clash between police and an anti austerity protesters in Rome.

After the introduction, Bellofiore used an effective phrase in order to involve the reader's attention, that is a quotation by Karl Marx: History repeats itself , first as tragedy, then as farce. The function of the quotation is to introduce the situation in Italy, a country where the most effective opposition to government are literally comedians and where the main problem is a Prime Minister distracted by sex and trials. So in Italy the story repeats itself as a farce. It is important to notice that Bellofiore speaks about Silvio Berlusconi because the article dates at Wednesday 21 September 2011.

To understand the true nature of the Italian Crisis it is important to know the limits of Europe; first of all Europe has a "single currency", the central bank does not act as lender and European budget is not high. The ECB  has an anti - inflationary stand and it raises the interest rate whatever the cause of price rises. Besides Germany tries to take advantage of southern Europe's deficit imposing them austerity budget.

Italy's crisis is not Italian-born and German neo-mercantilism induced stagnation.

Italian GDP decreased from 1,3% in 2010 to 1,0% in 2011. Besides in Italy there was from 1960s a continuous decrease in labour productivity and the growth rate; capitalists answered workers' struggles with a kind of investment strike in which they intensified labour rather innovation. Industrial sectors disappeared, technology was imported, public enterprises were privatized and mid-sized Italian companies profited from international exports but they depend on outside growth.

Later there was the institution of policies of flexibility of labour which led to a collapse of labour productivity, to unemployment and to increase of taxes.

In 1992 Italy left the European monetary system and lire lost value.

To conclude Bellofiore stated that what really missing in Europe is not money but internationalism.

ECONOMIC REGISTER

Single currency

ECB: European Central Bank

Neo - mercantilism: the power of a nation depends on how much it imports and it exports

Keynesianism: it is an economic school founded by John Maynard Keynes, who had focused the attention of economy from production of goods to demand.

Sovereign debt: it is the debt of a public corporation, for example if the expense of the State are higher than profit, the State asks for a loan to somebody and give him a title with interest

Private debt: it concerns with ordinary people

GDP: it stands for "gross domestic product" and it is the market value of goods and services in a specific moment

Eurobond: when you lend money to a foreign corporation