Silvio Berlusconi Made A $5.4 Billion Offer To Taxpayers That Caused The Italian Market To Crater
Did you see what Italy did today?
It got crushed to the tune of 4.5%.
What's the big concern?
Basically, there's an Italian vote coming up, and it seems like Berlusconi's party just keeps creeping a little bit higher, raising the odds of a chaotic outcome.
This weekend Berlusconi upped the ante, basically offering taxpayers free money if they vote for him, an offer which infuriated the current PM Mario Monti.
Silvio Berlusconi’s campaign promise to give Italian taxpayers a cash rebate of 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion) was criticized by Prime Minister Mario Monti as an attempt to buy votes. “We can call it a quid pro quo or even a friendly attempt at corruption,” Monti said today in an interview with RTL 102.5 radio. “Berlusconi wants to buy the votes of Italians with the money that Italians had to turn over to cover up the shortfall left in the public accounts by Berlusconi, who governed for eight of the past 10 years.”
Already, a site has set up the Berlusconi offer generator.
Check it out:
