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Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 7: Italy Does Chaos With Style

by John Rubino on February 26, 2013 · 14 comments

As an Italian-American I’m allowed to say it: Italians are an amusing mess. They go on about “la dolce vita,” the sweet life of long lunches and short work days and pretty girls on little scooters – without acknowledging or apparently even realizing that the whole show is based on other people’s money. Take away [...]

Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 6: Here Comes the Debt Ceiling

by John Rubino on January 5, 2013 · 21 comments

The fiscal cliff was always going to end with a whimper because that was the obvious path of least resistance. In the end, simply avoiding big tax increases and spending cuts while adding a few more trillion to the coming decade’s deficit was rewarded by the markets with a huge rally. Everybody went home happy, [...]

Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 4: Hollande’s Short Honeymoon

by John Rubino on November 14, 2012 · 14 comments

The premise of this series is that once a country’s debt rises to a certain level, the country becomes impossible to govern. Voters accustomed to a relatively easy life based on other people’s money won’t accept the truth that they’re not actually rich, so each new leader sees his or her popularity plunge almost immediately and [...]

Secessionist Movements: Another Layer of Complexity

by John Rubino on October 30, 2012 · 9 comments

One of the lessons of medieval history (I’m listening to one of those recorded lecture series on the subject this week) is that Europe wasn’t always made up of today’s familiar countries. Italy, Germany, and Spain in particular started out as a patchwork of smaller kingdoms and principalities that were eventually rolled up by the [...]

Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 3: Gridlock and the Fiscal Cliff

by John Rubino on May 28, 2012 · 31 comments

Europe’s political problems are hogging the headlines, with good reason. So much debt is coming due so soon that big decisions about Greece and Spain have to be made within the next couple of months to avoid a systemic melt-down. But the US has some deadlines of its own, with no consensus on what to [...]

Why We’re Ungovernable

by John Rubino on July 14, 2010 · 33 comments

For the first time in 250 years, politics has become irrelevant. Not uninteresting or unimportant; obviously the way a society organizes itself matters to its citizens and its place in the world. But today there are no policies left on the “possible” menu that will save us from what’s coming. So a rational person’s time [...]


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