Italians have been divided in two parties: those blaming public sector inefficiencies and calling for competitive tendering; and those refusing to privatize water and willing to go back to the fiscal budget.
It gives the Republicans a justification to oppose, by rote, every appointment and every expenditure, which helps make their belief in public-sector inefficiency self-fulfilling but otherwise doesn't do anybody much good.
"Being in defence means state-sector inefficiencies, political interference and perhaps corruption," says Giacomo Vaciago of the Università Cattolica in Milan.
But poor financial regulation and supervision, together with financial-sector inefficiencies, are more likely to have caused the U.S. crisis than openness to capital inflow.
The OECD says the country's high debt level, its public-sector inefficiencies and large black economy need to be tackled if it is to realise its full growth potential, which the OECD puts at a rate of above 7% a year.
When someone does criticise the public sector for inefficiency and incompetence, I think we can all look to private sector examples that have hit the news and demonstrate that imcompetence is not a public sector characteristic, any more than it is a private sector characteristic.
Tackle inefficiency in both sectors: Inefficient and incompetent management practices in the private sector typically have much larger consequences for the individual (they will be fired) and for the organisation (they will go bust).
Speaking after a cabinet meeting that broke up late Monday after more than five hours, Mr. Monti said the cuts of €4.2 billion, or $5.6 billion, from more than €700 billion in total state spending were designed to curb the growth of the public sector and reduce inefficiencies.
And once again, the entrepreneurial sector is attacking inefficiencies as they arise: one former Microsoft executive has started a company, Aditi, that has hired and trained several hundred talented programmers in Bangalore, India, to provide outsourced programming support for U.S. companies.
Biotech is a sector where market inefficiencies abound.
