NPR.

Last week Italy's government imploded.

Central Banker turned Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned after a year and a half.

And what has been going on in Italy makes a lot more sense.

If you know about a term called vinculo esterno, external constraint.

Ah, no, that's a classic one.

Alessandro Speciale co-wrote a biography of Mario Draghi.

This idea that Italy isn't able to choose on its own the right policies.

Instead, Alessandro says Italy chose external, personal trainers, let's say, to help it

restrain spending and reform its bureaucracy.

The two big external trainers helping Italy get in shape, the European Union and the market.

And at stake right now, a tantalizing 200 billion euro pandemic support package dangling

in front of Italy, if it can pass a bunch of reforms.

This is the Antiguaia front planet money I'm Darian Woods.

And I'm Adrienne Ma.

Today's show how vinculo esterno shaped Italy's modern economic history.

It's a tragedy with one leading man who deeply believes in this way of solving Italy's problems.

The economist turned to politician Mario Draghi.

In the early 1990s, Italy was in crisis.

It was stagnating economically and it had run up a large amount of government debt.

And one reason cited was that a considerable chunk of the Italian economy was run through

these big state-run conglomerate companies.

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