No Reform for Italy

Italy had a golden opportunity for major structural reforms and they squandered it, says Matthew Yglesias at Slate. They ousted Silvio Berlusconi, but the technocrats who succeeded him are doing exactly what he would have done: a blend of tax hikes and spending cuts. Serious reform, it seems, was blocked from the right—by Berlusconi's old party and by powerful guilds that objected to closed professions like taxi drivers and pharmacists being opened up.