That's too bad about Berlusconi vis-a-vis Italy's relationship to the States.
What is this the 56 or 57th administration change since WWII? Entry into the EU has hurt Italy, if my relatives over there are assessing the situation properly. They hate the Euro, and their economy is as stagnant as can be. Just wait for a decade or so to pass, and for Italy's Italian people shortage problem to rear it's head. They ain't seen nothing yet.
Italians aren't lazy by any stretch of the imagination, but they can be obtuse and class conscious. An Italian law student would never take a laborer's postion to tide him over between jobs or before getting his first job. He's too good for that. There's just not the work ethic in Italy that there is here. There's an inability to switch economic gears.
Another problem is that the younger generation of Italians have soaked up the anti-American propaganda of the rest of the Continent. My parents generation (70 to 80 years of age) looked upon the US as a the great Liberator who did not occupy, and they really had affection for the US because of the massive influx of emigres to her shore. Not the younger generation, though I have to say that I don't believe they're as rabid as the Germans or French when it comes to their feelings about the US.