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Does the outcome of last month’s election in Italy have any relevance to the U.S.? A youngish center-left candidate who claimed to represent a new politics of hope, “Si puo fare,” (”It can be done”) lost decisively to a 71-year-old figure of the center-right who is nothing if not a familiar fixture of Italian politics. The loser’s resemblance to Barack Obama is not coincidental. Walter Veltroni was the first European politician to promote Obama after the two met in 2005. Veltroni wrote the introduction for the Italian release of “The Audacity of Hope.” While he has moved to the center in recent years, Veltroni began his political life in the Communist Party, a biographical detail unforgiven by some voters.
But Silvio Berlusconi pulled out a great victory. And that is where resemblances to American politics must end. Consider what Berlusconi faces. The New York Times reported it this way: “Beginning his third term as prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday pledged unusually forceful measures to solve Italy’s deep problems. These steps include new restrictions on illegal immigrants and the use of the military to tackle the longstanding garbage crisis in Naples.” The military? To clear garbage?
Your humble correspondent was just in Italy recently and amid many delights (including the gorgeous Amalfi Coast) had the misfortune to spend the better part of a day in Naples. Nothing prepares you for the squalor. The trash is piled up in great hillocks around the city, many as much as one-story high. The stench is oppressive. A great deal of garbage has of course escaped its plastic bags and decorates the streets and sidewalks. Everywhere your eye falls, even in the district surrounding the Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace), blight reigns. Having just seen Rome and Sorrento, Naples was a jar.
My friend Michael Ledeen, an expert on Italian fascism, Eurocommunism, the history of Italy, terrorism and many other subjects, is completing a book on Naples. He compares it to New Orleans, another corrupt city. Both cities are doomed, he explains. New Orleans, it need hardly be recalled post-Katrina, lies below sea level in the path of hurricanes. Naples sits right below Mount Vesuvius, which has erupted dozens of times since its catastrophic explosion in A.D. 79, most recently in 1944.

news-leader.com

Lenders report that it costs up to $50,000, or almost half the loan balance, each time they write off a foreclosure.
What to do if you get into trouble?
If your home is at risk of foreclosure, don’t wait, said Teri Duffy, executive director of the Housing Community Resource Center in Vancouver.
“Notify the bank as soon as you know your payment will be late,” said Duffy, who oversees the only local nonprofit that provides foreclosure counseling.
For immediate guidance, contact the Housing Community Resource Center at 360-690-4496.
By CAMI JONER and COURTNEY SHERWOOD, Columbian staff writers
Jennifer and Mathew Murphy are about to lose their Vancouver home. Lamont Shaindlin lost his in April. In an east Vancouver subdivision, one out of every nine houses has entered foreclosure since the start of the year.
The Clark County foreclosure rate has been rapidly climbing since mid-2007, largely overlooked because most reports examine the larger Portland-Vancouver area, which has not gone up as much.
In Clark County, 4.44 out of every 1,000 homes were in foreclosure in the first quarter of the year. In the Portland-Vancouver metro area it was three out of every 1,000, and 5.09 nationwide, according to RealtyTrac, a national real estate-tracking service.
Across the county, 1,049 houses were in foreclosure through April, up fourfold from 2007. The spike has been fueled in part by a tightening credit market and a weaker housing economy, but house-flipping speculators also played a big role.
Speculators own as many as one in five homes in some newer neighborhoods in the county, and now many are losing those properties.
Behind the numbers are tears and tough choices for hundreds of local homeowners who can no longer afford their loans, and big financial losses for those whose real estate investments helped fuel the situation.
Rising payments got the Murphys, Hazel Dell residents who say they did not understand the details of their adjustable rate mortgage, in trouble.

columbian.com