If Italy’s a country on the brink, it doesn’t show it. At least not in Milan. Along the
city’s rainswept streets, thousand of designer-clad people hit the shops this weekend, unperturbed at the prospect of the government’s likely collapse and the risk of a financial meltdown. At a
small deli called Pack overpriced but delicious pieces of Bresaola and Parmegiano are sold in green-and-gold Harrods-like wrapping. La Rinascente, the city’s upmarket department store, is packed
with high-rolling shoppers and the nightclub under the main Armani store is heaving with models and their male accoutrements. Here life remains dolce.
Of course Milan is not Italy – it is the country’s commercial heartland, a little Germany south of the Dolomites. But northern Italy is not immune to the country’s problems. The Italian government’s debt load is enormous and the country’s economy is stuck due to over-regulation, strike-eager unions, an oversized bureaucracy, high taxes, and a level of corruption that would make a Greek feel at home.
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