The Italian cabinet has approved what the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi describes as painful austerity measures to improve public finances and reduce the nation's budget deficit. Twenty billion euros will be cut from government's spending next year and another 25 billion by 2013. Fifty thousand jobs in local governments will go as Rome cuts central funding. Italy's borrowing costs rose sharply before the move as investors lost confidence in the government's ability to reduce its deficit.