Break Out Your Canaletto's: Southern Europe is Doomed

I see numbers like these from Golem XIV:

Just a snap shot of how well our fearless leaders’ solutions are working.
The Milan Index MIB

Its highest ever point was.......44 364   on the week of 14 May 2007
Its lowest ever was.................12 895  on the week of 2nd March 2009
Today 8 May ’12.....................13 936

So 3 solid years of hundreds of billions of Euros of Italian and European bank bail outs and the resultant austerity to pay for them and ….
Italy’s index is 1000 from the crisis low of ’09 and over 30 000 lower than the top.  Some recovery!...MORE

and the first thing that pops into my head are Canaletto's depictions of Rome as an economic and political backwater with shrubbery growing out of the ruins:

 

Canaletto. Rome: the Arch of Constantine. 1742. 

Oil on canvas. Royal Collection, UK