Milan, Italy — Italy's national election is starting tomorrow, and all of the talk is about exactly one man: Beppe Grillo.
Grillo is a comedian-turned-populist, anti-bank, anti-Euro crusader. He makes bankers queasy.
And he's surging in the polls.
Really. There are no official public polls right now, but we've seen private polls that get passed around by bankers and in just the last several days his support is booming. He's adding support by the day.
For awhile we've tried to figure out who a US equivalent to Grillo would be. Some have compared him to a George Carlin or Bill Maher type. But actually an apt comparison would be the pseudonymous Tyler Durden, who runs the well-known Wall Street doom blog ZeroHedge.
The key thing is that Grillo's own success as a public figure started from his blog, Blog di Beppe Grillo. It's from that blog that his railing on bankers and politicians became a movement, which has now turned into a huge political party gathering support by the day.
Yesterday his "Tsunami" tour rolled into Rome, and drew a crowd of at least 100,000. The mainstream politicians are attacking him.
For those around the world who are frustrated by bankers and elite institutions, the current avatar of frustration is Beppe Grillo.
Here's video of him in Rome last night.