When much of the Northeastern USA and Canada suffered from a massive power failure, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi boasted that such a problem could never befall Italy. This was extremely foolish since Italy imports a large portion of their energy and thus cannot control it.

The utter foolishness of Berlusconi’s comments were revealed less than 2 months after his boast. Yesterday, 90 percent of Italy was without power after a freak accident and the authorities hope to restore power to all sometime Tuesday. 90%!

I feel for those without power and would not wish this on the Italians despite the bluster of their prime minister. But I must admit, I appreciate his modern day example on why one should avoid hubris.