In October of 1976 a tinsmith named Vito Pennetta rented an airplane and flew over Rome's Piazza Venezia, sending 1.5 million lire in bank notes fluttering down on passersby. His spectacular gesture was a desperate attempt to embarrass the government into providing information about the cause of an accident in which his son Roberto had been killed a year and a half previously in the crash of a sailplane just outside the Italian capital. Despite all his frantic efforts up to that time, Pennetta had been unable to obtain a copy of either the results of the court investigation or the technical evaluation of the incident. The official justification was always that no one was available in the Air Ministry to type up the technical data of the experts' report.

Over a year and a half is a long time for a distraught father to wait for a simple report. But the Italian civil service reckons in long time spans. When someone retires, he may wait many months or even years before he receives his state pension. In tax offices throughout the country sacks of unopened returns are piled in corridors where they gather dust. The Treasury Ministry still has a war damages bureau with some 150 officials. While France and Germany settled all their war damage claims years ago, in Italy hundreds of thousands of such cases remain to be dealt with. Permission for a normal construction project generally requires three years.