Time for Italians to put Berlusconi out to pasture?

From The Guardian:

Not satisfied with having once referred to Barack Obama as “sun-tanned”, Silvio Berlusconi today returned to the subject, telling a reporter he was paler than the US president.

After a journalist commented that his response to the global economic crisis made him seem like Obama, Italy’s prime minister, who is famed for his even, year-round tan, shot back: “I’m paler, also, because it’s been so long since I’ve been in the sun.” He quickly added: “He is more handsome, younger and taller.”

His retort echoed the comment that got him into hot water last November when he joked in Moscow that Dmitri Medvedev would have no difficulty getting on with his new US counterpart because Obama, like the Russian president, was “handsome, young and sun-tanned”. The 72-year-old media entrepreneur-turned-conservative politician brushed off censure of his comment, saying his critics had no sense of humour.

His latest gaffe came as he was already under fire in his own country for two other “jokes” that some of his compatriots found offensive. Opposition politicians, already indignant at his use of confidence votes to force through legislation without proper debate, expressed outrage when Berlusconi declared that MPs were in parliament “to make up the numbers”. He was earlier criticised by trade unionists for saying people who lost their jobs because of the global economic crisis should “find something to do”. Berlusconi added that, if he were fired, he certainly would not be “twiddling my thumbs”.

From the International Herald Tribune:

President Barack Obama plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban there and in Pakistan, the administration told congressional leaders on Thursday.

In imposing conditions on the Afghans and Pakistanis, Mr. Obama is replicating a strategy used in Iraq two years ago in hopes of justifying a deeper American commitment and prodding the governments in the region to take more responsibility for the political, military and economic missions there.

“The era of the blank check is over,” Mr. Obama told the congressional leaders at the White House, according to an account of the meeting provided on the condition of anonymity because it was a private session.

From The Globe and Mail:

Timothy Geithner fired the first shot yesterday in what is likely to be a long battle in Congress for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. financial regulation targeting the darkest corners of the shadow banking system, including derivatives trading, hedge funds and money markets.

Invoking the financial disasters of the past year – from Bernard Madoff and American International Group Inc. to risky mortgage lending – the U.S. Treasury Secretary called for “fundamentally new rules of the game” in testimony before a congressional committee. “What we need is better, smarter, tougher regulation,” Mr. Geithner told the House of Representatives financial services committee.

“We’ve seen the costs of these weaknesses, and gaps are catastrophic to the system as a whole.”

The plan marks one of the most extensive overhauls of financial regulation since the Great Depression as the government plays catch-up to decades of financial innovation that have left gaping holes in supervision.

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