The sad truth in all three countries is that their voters are not yet ready to swallow the nasty medicine of change. Reform is always painful. And all three have too many cosseted insiders—those with secure jobs, those in the public sector—who see little to gain and much to lose. They are ready to fight against change even though it would help outsiders—the young, the unemployed—and, ultimately, their economies.

It's not often I feel the need to say this about The Economist, but they're wrong. In a number of ways.

For starters, a hypothetical: if Italy's voters had been ready "to swallow the nasty medicine of change", what, exactly, would they have done differently? The Economist seems to suggest that giving either side a big majority would've been enough. But which one? Berlusconi's had a go and failed. Prodi is more concerned with not pissing off the large communist faction and seeing his hold on power slip away in the midst of intra-coalition conflict again. Italy's voters could have all been voting for the side most likely to force this "nasty medicine" down their throats, but unfortunately 50 per cent thought the crook was the most likely to do this, and 50 per cent thought that the bore was. They weren't, of course, but that's irrelevant.

This wasn't an obvious reluctance on the part of the Italian voters to swallow a bitter pill of economic reform. It was a confused choice based on one crazy-ass rancourous electoral campaign.

The Economist, along with the rest of the media, as is their wont, are the ones 'in search of a crisis'. Lest we froget, crises sell almost as much as sex. Lazy ordinary hacks looked at the electoral system, The Economist looked at the economy. The Economist thus got an awful lot closer, but theirs is still an ultimately blinkered view. The crisis may exist in the economy, but its expression, and the reason a solution is so unbecoming, lies in the more public political realm. Solutions to structural economic problems are infuriatingly unpolitical.

Say Mr Prodi, an economics professor, turned out to know exactly what was needed to heal the wounds of Italy's economy. Say he gained a sizeable majority, rather than the 50-or-so he will have if the result stands. He will still head a fractious coalition, which contains a sizeable bloc that wants the exact opposite of the reforms he would want to push. He will thus still be in constant fear of new elections. He will still have to battle against a media that is owned by a man whose sole object will be to bring down the government in order to take power back for himself. The economic problems are nothing compared to actually implementing the solutions, and that's even with a massive assumption that Mr Prodi both knows what those solutions are and has the will to attempt to implement them, rather than pursuing a more moderate program of compromise and explaining how difficult everything is to the cameras.

The Italians couldn't have voted for The Economist's desired reforms even if they had wanted to.

We've seen the problems facing Prodi. Berlusconi has shown over the last five years that he's not up to the task. And although sorting the country out would help keep him in power were he to get back, he's getting old: he's as likely to have a heart attack as he is to cement his time in power with some radical economic reforms. However much he may believe himself to be immortal, I'm guessing he knows he isn't, and time is running out to spend some real quality time with his Bermuda retreat.

The great thing about Italy at the moment, however, is that their impossible future is being overshadowed by their impossible present.

Elsewhere in The Economist:

Noting that the two alliances were separated by a mere 25,000 votes in the election for the lower-house Chamber of Deputies, Mr Berlusconi demanded a re-examination of some 43,000 spoilt ballots. He also contested the tally for Italians abroad that decided the outcome in the Senate, saying it revealed “many irregularities”. Far from conceding defeat, he attacked his opponent and claimed victory. His intransigence could yet spell trouble for Mr Prodi.

It's not just Silvio's intransigence that could "yet spell trouble for Mr Prodi", it's simply Silvio. He is trouble. Jealous trouble. With a media empire.

The situation is so confused, that there is talk, apparently, of the current president, 85-year-old Carlo Azeglio Ciampi staying in office past his use-by-date in May, as a token gesture of stability.

Yet, it may just be the level of instability that ends up holding Italy together. Like Mr Burns in the Simpsons, who has so many diseases that they are miraculously cancelling each other out, thus stopping him from dying, everyone on the centre Left may just play nice, in the knowledge that last time they didn't, they caused the government to fall three times in five years, ultimately letting in our old friend Silvio.

This is possible, but to say it is likely is to underestimate the power of Mr Berlusconi. For whatever reasons, from a possible psychosis to a simple desire to die outside of a jail cell, Silvio is pretty keen on being in power. Make no mistake, he will do everything he can to get it back. He even cheekily offered to take part in a Germany-style 'grand coalition', knowing that it would almost certainly collapse, making fresh elections more likely. A grand coalition of "dickheads" and "criminals". Yeah, right. He and Prodi despise each other. Getting them round a cabinet table would be hard enough, but look a bit further and it gets even more ludicrous. Is there anyone out there who can imagine Fausto Bertinotti, the raving communist, and Alessandra Mussolini (yep, HIS granddaughter), an equally-raving fascist, agreeing on anything?

There're plenty of crises out there, if only people were looking in the right places.