© Agence France-Presse/Donato FassanoMario Monti
Mario Monti has resigned as Prime Minster of Italy, saying he no longer has the support he needs to govern. Monti replaced Silvio Berlusconi a little over a year ago after the previous govt proved unable to cope with the financial problems facing it.
Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian President, has accepted his resignation but has asked Monti to stay on as a head of a caretaker government until new elections in a couple of months.
His resignation comes as MPs passed the 2013 budget drawn up by his government with 309 votes in favor and 55 against.
Monti is widely credited with overseeing a recovery in Italy's bonds and repairing the country's tattered image abroad. His leadership has also been praised by Angela Merkel and other European leaders such as Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the group of euro area finance ministers.
When Monti took over, Italy's borrowing was approaching unaffordable levels. He introduced pension reform and raised the retirement age to 66 for men and 62 for women. He also did away with a system of seniority pensions, which allowed many civil servants to retire at 58.
Most importantly though was under Monti yields on Italian 10-year bonds fell to under 7%, now they are between 4 and 5%. Bonds are a key indicator of how much a country has to pay to borrow money and at over 7%, which they were before Berlusconi stepped down, they are unaffordable. However, Monti is unpopular with many Italians dealing with soaring unemployment, a shrinking economy and higher taxes. A poll conducted on November 17th showed that 62% of Italians had a negative view of Monti's government while 82% said they had little confidence in the economy improving.
Comment: Here are two other versions circulating in the media of the same original photo as above, but do you notice anything funny about the background in each of these? They appear to have been photoshopped.