There is something pathetic, and pointless, in an ailing company threatening to sue a reluctant buyer into taking it over - especially when the ailing company is Fiat, Italy's largest private employer, and the reluctant buyer is General Motors, which has enough problems of its own elsewhere in Europe to want to rescue or restructure Fiat.

But confirmation that Fiat is just a symptom of Italy's wider economic plight has now come from Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who chairs both Fiat and Cofindustria, Italian industry's trade association. In a speech this week, he described the country's economic underperformance as more serious than at any time since 1945.