Silvio Berlusconi's Swan Dive

Yesterday, Italy's whore-loving Prime Minister announced that he would retire within 20 days. Today, uncertainty regarding the future of the Italian economy led to our debt rate skyrocketing past the 7 percent mark—the same level that officially defaulted the Portuguese, Greek, and Irish economies. What that means in simple terms is that Italy is on the verge of bankruptcy. Rome, not Athens, is now the center of the international economic crisis. Italy, which makes up almost 20 percent of the entire European economy, might bring the Euro-zone down with it (I am shitting my pants as I write this), and we might lose the funniest ex-cruise ship crooner turned head of state/clown/sex-monster the world has ever seen.

Robert Peston, Business editor for BBC News, explains that "When the implicit interest rate rises to that kind of level, investors know that a country with big debts can't afford to repay what it owes." Essentially, Italy is now considered unable to repay its public debt, which amounts to something like 1.9 trillion euros (i.e. 1,900 billion euros, up 31 billion in the past six months). 1,900 billion euros is $2,600 billion. Not bad for a country whose GDP is $2,100 billion, right? Debt in Italy is now 120 percent of GDP, which is pretty high. But bad as that may be, it's not the real problem. Consider that the US public debt is $14,000 billion, compared to a GDP of $14,300 billion. Yes, the ratio is worse, but everybody's in debt and there's not much that can be done about that, apparently.

The real problem is that nobody believes Italy has the capacity to solve this crisis. And when most European governments, the European Central Bank, and pretty much every analyst says that your country's about to go down, those experts of the self-fulfilling prophecy tend to be proved right. Because when everybody says you'll fail, you fail. And right now, everybody's saying that Italy is on the verge of a total economic collapse. Therefore, we are. And that's sad.

What's even sadder, however, is that the man in charge, Silvio Berlusconi, will probably have to stop entertaining us with his madcap antics. He has vowed to resign, but not before putting in place the economic reforms demanded by the EU. As a person who strongly believes that the Italian political class can't do anything—literally, they can't do anything—to change the inevitable course of economic history, the only real difference will be that our politics won't be as entertaining.

In a country where even the best politician is Europe's worst, Silvio Berlusconi was the epitome of the worst kind of Italian-ness as perceived abroad. Following his completely insensitive but correct remarks, watching him publicly flirt with every girl in sight, and listing his many, many gaffes had become a national past-time. What will we do now? Will we have to start talking seriously about politics? What will Italy be without Silvio? I don't know enough about economics to tell you if we'll be able to solve the crisis without an IMF bailout, but I do know enough about my country to tell you that it will certainly be an infinitely more boring place.

You see, Berlusconi was a man who was essentially born to be the star of a vaguely racist, vaguely homophobic 50s sitcom. The show, in my mind, is called Oh, Silvio! In it, his cuckolded wife would cross her arms and say the title every time Silvio did something very "Silvio," like make a politically incorrect joke or have sex with an underage prostitute.

The big news, for me, is that I'll have to start getting my laughs from my Curb box sets and not the news. Goodbye, Silvio. You will be missed—by me, and by all the other Italian comedy fans.