The Italian 10% Solution

standard stock market trader regulated controlled lines of coke

Carlo Giovanardi, a junior minister with responsibility for the family, said that the economic world was ‘polluted by the use of narcotic substances, particularly cocaine, which makes you lose a sense of reality’

• John Hooper in Rome
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 October 2011

An Italian minister has blamed cocaine for stock market fluctuations. Photograph: Paul Bock / Alamy/Alamy

First it was the hedge funds, then the ratings agencies. Now, a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s government has pointed to a different reason for the world financial turmoil. The problem — or one of them — is cocaine. And to tackle it, Carlo Giovanardi, a junior minister with responsibility for the family, said he intended introducing drug tests for securities traders on the Milan Borsa. Speaking in a YouTube interview, he said the drug is one of the causes of fluctuations on the stock exchange and “an alarm that needs to be listened to”. The minister said testing traders to see if they had been snorting the odd line was part of a wider project for checks on pilots, professional drivers, public officials, surgeons and police officers. “The idea of giving drug tests to people with great responsibility is absolutely acceptable,” he said. “I rather doubt that an investor would entrust his or her savings to an alcoholic. And the same thing holds good for cocaine.”