Tens of thousands of opposition activists demonstrated in central Rome on Saturday for the ouster of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, while the European Central Bank (ECB) said it might end the purchase of Italian government bonds if it concludes Italy is not adopting promised reforms.
Democratic Party leader Pierluigi Bersani told the crowd that his party is prepared to work with other opposition groups to lead a new government.
“If there is discontinuity and change, we are ready with the other opposition to create a new government,” Bersani told the crowd in Piazza San Giovani.
Berlusconi’s grip on power has been weakened by the ongoing sovereign debt crisis and infighting in his coalition that has prevented clear measures.
Six members of his party this week urged him to step aside to allow the formation of a broader coalition with a centrist opposition party.
The protesters, who arrived on buses and trains from throughout Italy, were joined by center-left politicians from France and Germany, as well as a group of topless female demonstrators from Ukraine known as Femen.
“We are not credible. I am ashamed of how other European countries see us. It is pitiful. This man [Berlusconi], this marionette, must go away,” said Mario Puddu, a retiree.
Berlusconi has promised a confidence vote on new legislation sought by the EU to shore up Italy’s economy.
The measures include a plan to sell government assets, tax breaks to encourage employment for the young and getting women back into the work force.
The legislation would also liberalize store opening hours and open closed professions.
Italy also agreed at a G20 summit in Cannes to have the IMF monitor the reform efforts, a humbling step for the world’s eighth-largest economy, which has the second-largest public debt in Europe.
Berlusconi, 75, is coming under mounting pressure at home and abroad as his government’s inability to convince investors and European allies that Italy can trim the eurozone’s second-biggest debt sent the yield on the country’s 10-year bond to more than 6.4 percent on Friday.
Italy’s borrowing costs to service its enormous public debt at 120 percent of GDP have been rising since the summer, raising concerns of a default.
While Europe has bailed out -Ireland, Greece and Portugal, eurozone leaders say Italy is too big to bail out.
ECB council member Yves Mersch said the bank is free to decide to stop buying Italian bonds if conditions are no longer met, in an interview with Italy’s La Stampa published yesterday.
The ECB has been buying Italian bonds since Aug. 8 to try to bring down borrowing costs in a country that sells more than 200 billion euros (US$276 billion) of bonds a year.
Mersch also said ECB President Mario Draghi’s priority remains price stability, when asked if the new president would be more focused on growth.
EU treaties should be changed as the confidence crisis poses a governance issue, he added.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
RSS