Last year was the 10th anniversary of the founding of Silvio Berlusconi’s political party Forza Italia.

The party was founded at a time when the established political order appeared to be crumbling, due to corruption charges left, right and centre (in every sense).

A report in today’s newspapers show that the wealth of Berlusconi’s family has tripled in the 11 years since he graciously entered politics to save the country [we’ve been reading his autobiography!]

When he entered politics his family’s wealth was calculated at 161.9million Euro. Now it’s an estimated 983.8million Euro.

The voters who had hoped that Berlusconi’s business acumen would be put to good use running the country have yet to see any return on their political investment.

Some cruel souls have pointed to various measures undertaken by the Berlusconi government, ranging from the Gasparri Broadcasting Bill, through to changes in the legal penalties for false accounting (they were reduced under the Berlusconi government), that may have benefited to this spectacular growth of Berlusconi’s business empire.

How is it that Berlusconi’s business sense hasn’t turned around the financial decline of the Italian economy? Listening to his government they’d have you believe that it’s all due to September 11th 2001, despite the fact that other European countries have bounced back from the global downturn. A different reading, such as that of David Lane (Business and Finance correspondent for The Economist) call in to question Berlusconi’s mythical business sense. Lane suggests instead that “he