As Greece finally gets itself together, the spotlight has shifted to yet another European country with a debt problem even worse than that of the former mentioned.

Italy, the 3rd largest economy in the Eurozone, had claimed for a lengthy amount of time that it didn’t have a debt problem, but now finds itself in a hole and in the center of it is Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A blog I found on The Economist regarding the end of Berlusconi’s reign clearly expressed the opinion of the Italian people. Berlusconi wasn’t a very liked man―especially in recent months as he stood and watched the Italian economy deteriorate to crisis levels leading many (71% of citizens) to call for his resignation. After losing a key vote this week, he was asked to step down once economic reforms had been passed through parliament and it was to the delight of not only the Italian people, but global markets in hopes Italy would now be able to save itself. (Video Summary)

One might wonder how someone with 17 years of political experience could have led a country into so much debt but looking at Greece as well, it’s not experience that makes a difference. The key to recovery is strong leadership and action, both of which neither country had.

Will the Eurozone survive? Only time will tell.

More than 50 days later, the Occupy movement continues to exist throughout many cities in North America and the world, but the so called “99%” aren’t so united after all and I can personally attest to that.

My personal favourite

In Piper Hoekstra’s blog about “The 53%“, one can see how there are people (hard working citizens from a variety of backgrounds) who don’t support the Occupy movement. Personally, I was getting tired of hearing about the movement especially after there was an overdose and a separate death (a suspected overdose) at the Occupy Vancouver tent city. It seems like all they are doing now is sitting around in tents all day (wasting tax payer dollars) and just hoping something will happen to change their present situation.

NEWSFLASH: Nothing is likely to change and the movement is starting to look more like a lazy bunch of people who don’t want to work. Instead, these people could be like “The 53%” who may agree that corporations are “evil”, but still work hard to make a living for themselves.

While “The 53%” is a more serious response to the Occupy movement, others have quickly turned it into a joke as you can see below.

What percent are you?

About five years ago when you searched the word “trending” on the Google search engine you would likely get a list of definitions. If you do the search today, you’ll be highly likely to find the word Twitter a few times in your results.

Twitter is a microblogging service created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey as a way to send short text messages (known as “tweets”) to a group of people over the internet. Microblogging wasn’t very popular until Twitter (and Tumblr) were created and now we even have microblogs for university courses! It’s popularity has increased dramatically over the years; in 2007, there was about 5,000 tweets per day and it rose to 50 million per day in 2010.

Like other free social networking websites, raising funds to pay all the costs can be difficult if one doesn’t consider allowing outside advertising which led Twitter to offer paid advertising for companies such as Starbucks. However, Twitter has been able to raise more than $50 million from venture capitalist funding (which is money invested into a high-risk and usually new company) and may have an initial public offering in 2013.

Tweets may be limited to 140 characters, but Twitter’s growth still hasn’t found a limit.

Follow me @Harpal_Kandola!