Robert Waldmann has a pretty good account.

Waldmann is an American economist who works in Rome. For readers less familiar with current American political discourse, his use of the terms “serious people” and “serious right thinking people”, and his description of Monti as “the very eminent Eurocrat economist extremely serious person”, should be understood as they would be when used, in the USA, to mock “very serious people” who treat only the conservative Washington, D.C. consensus as important.