On April 10th a judge sequestered 49m ($68m) of assets said to belong to Roberto Formigoni, who was for 18 years governor of Lombardy and for all but three a leading member of Mr Berlusconi's party.
The idea was this: that new fiat money should be created precisely in proportion to the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere and sequestered in plants, soil or the rocks under our feet.