Financial Transparency Coalition

DEPENDING on your view of his final destination, Silvio Berlusconi has either a guardian angel or the luck of the devil. Before the G8 summit in L’Aquila, aides portrayed a man staring into the abyss. Rumours were rife of a new compromising batch of photographs showing Italy’s prime minister cavorting with “escorts”. L’Aquila was being hit by aftershocks from the April earthquake that led Mr Berlusconi to move the summit there. Given another tremor of over four points, it would have been cancelled or moved again. There was such a tremor—but two days after the summit. The spicy photographs,...