Italy Watch...

[kenneal - lagger]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ital ... SKBN1EM1HA

It would be interesting to know just what the thinking behind that system was, if there was any! Looks like it was designed by a committee.

[Snail]

It looks like the 5 star movement and League have published their coalition plans to form the next Italian government.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44168602

Sounds half interesting: basic income for 2 years when unemployed, clampdown on migration, different stance on Russia, tougher stance on eu etc. Nothing radical.

Also https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-c ... o-salvini/.

[adam2]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44223034

New Italian PM announced. Could be interesting as they are said to be Eurosceptic, no intention to leave the EU has been announced, but it seems that they intend following policies contrary to EU rules.
Increasing public sector borrowing, and restricting immigration in particular.

[Snail]

The italian president has decided not to accept the election outcome!

https://www.politico.eu/article/italys- ... net-talks/


------

Ah, this is essentially why I voted brexit. Nearly forgot this past year. Was beginning to regret.

[adam2]

The crisis would seem to be worsening.
The person suggested by the President as an interim or caretaker prime minister has declined to accept the job.
Fresh elections seem likely, with many commentators predicting a victory for the populists.

The Italian national debt is already excessive by some standards, and the populists want to increase it.
The cost of borrowing by the Italian government has increased sharply which is generally considered to be a bad sign.

[fuzzy]

If a government does not do what the banks say, they will engineer a default. Such is the power of debt.

[Little John]

Yes, that is exactly what they will do.

It just seems to me, on so many issues and in so many territories, the will of the people is being thwarted and the only way this ends is with proper violence at some point.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes, that is exactly what they will do.

It just seems to me, on so many issues and in so many territories, the will of the people is being thwarted and the only way this ends is with proper violence at some point.

"proper violence"? I don't believe I have ever seen those two words used together before. A strange concept for sure.

[raspberry-blower]

In case you missed it - a reminder as to who are most at risk from a potential Italian default:

Don Quijones: Which banks are most exposed to Italy's Sovereign Debt (other than the horribly exposed Italian Banks)?

Another reason to fear for the future of TSB then

In the past couple of days Italian bonds have been mullered:

Wolf Richter: NIRPS revenge: Italian Bonds plunge, worst day on record

This downward revision has potentially a long way to run yet:

But here’s the thing: Italian bonds – no matter what maturity – should never ever have traded with a negative yield. Their yields should always have been higher than US yields, given that the Italian government is in even worse financial shape than the US government. Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 131%, and more importantly, it doesn’t even control its own currency and cannot on its own slough off a debt crisis by converting it into a classic currency crisis, which is how Argentina is dealing with its government spending. The central bank of Argentina recently jacked up its 30-day policy rate to 40% to keep the peso from collapsing further.

That’s the neighborhood where Italy would be if it had its own currency. But the ECB’s QE shenanigans and NIRP drove even Italian yields below zero, and so now here is NIRP’s revenge.

But just a little. In fact, Italian yields are in the process of “normalizing,� but they’re doing it swiftly, rather than “gradually,� as the Fed likes to emphasize at every opportunity for a very good reason: It took the Fed over four years to push up the two-year Treasury yield by 210 basis points. Italy accomplished the same feat in less than two days.

So, according to Wolf Richter:

This yield normalization – or bloodbath, as others call it – comes on the heels of the failure of two anti-establishment parties, one on the left, the other on the right, to form a coalition government. They’d proposed to just blow off €250 billion of Italian bonds that the ECB has stupidly acquired, introduce an alternate currency, cut taxes, and raise spending.

If this plan had come to fruition, government bond yields would have spiked into the double digits, and a real default with big haircuts for investors would have been all but certain at those yields. Now the plan is off, the coalition hopes are in shambles, new elections are likely, and Italian voters get to sort this out, once again in their manner, in the voting booth

Vote, vote again and vote yet again to get the result TPTB wants

See also:

TAE: Hotel Europa

[Little John]

Yes, that is exactly what they will do.

It just seems to me, on so many issues and in so many territories, the will of the people is being thwarted and the only way this ends is with proper violence at some point.

"proper violence"? I don't believe I have ever seen those two words used together before. A strange concept for sure.

It's a northern English colloquialism. Whenever the word "proper" is used in such a linguistic context, it means "serious" or "seriously".

As in:

Proper dangerous
Proper good
etc

[adam2]

"New government agreed in Italy"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44322429

Led by "populists" we live in interesting times.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes, that is exactly what they will do.

It just seems to me, on so many issues and in so many territories, the will of the people is being thwarted and the only way this ends is with proper violence at some point.

"proper violence"? I don't believe I have ever seen those two words used together before. A strange concept for sure.

It's a northern English colloquialism. Whenever the word "proper" is used in such a linguistic context, it means "serious" or "seriously".

As in:

Proper dangerous
Proper good
etc

Well geezum crow that's a wicked good way to say it.!!!

[raspberry-blower]

David McWilliams: Why Italy had to say goodbye to the Dolce Vita

Deep in the economy, the strictures imposed by the euro have destroyed much of Italian industry. For example, having outgrown Germany’s industrial output in the 1980s and 1990s by 10 per cent, Italian factory output since Italy joined the euro has lagged Germany’s by 40 per cent.

This is an extraordinary reversal of the previous 50 years.

While German industrial might has solidified in the euro, Italy has become enfeebled. For example, almost one Italian manufacturing firm in five shut down between 2009 and 2012.

Production is now 26 per cent below 2007’s peak.

In short, Italian competitiveness has been decimated by the euro. Without devaluations, Italian industry has floundered. Either a country’s currency adjusts if it is not as competitive as its neighbour, or it goes out of business. Italy is gradually going out of business.

A damning appraisal of the impacts of joining the Euro has done to Italy's industrial might. It has been gutted. No wonder there is an anti EU backlash growing particularly in the South

[kenneal - lagger]

And a lot of Remainers think we should join the Euro!!! They have no idea!

[raspberry-blower]

And a lot of Remainers think we should join the Euro!!! They have no idea!

Yep - a lot of the Remainer camp would probably say they are "Centerists" without having the first idea of what such an insipid sounding term actually means.

Diane Johnstone: Italy: The centre cannot hold

The traditional governing parties, center “left� and center “right� all follow the same neoliberal policies and constitute the self-designated “center.� Mainstream media enforce center right claims to authority on the base of orthodox economic expertise, while the center left derives its authority from its “values,� centered on an identity politics version of human rights. “Center� sounds so reasonable, so safe from dangerous “extremes� and unpredictable populism. Against such threats, the Center presents itself as the champion and safeguard of “democracy.�

How true is this?

World Values Survey results indicate that in Europe and the United States, people who describe themselves as “centrist� on the average have less attachment to democracy (e.g. free and fair elections) that those on the left, and even those on the far right. This is not as surprising as it may seem at first, since “centrists� are by definition attached to the status quo. In European countries, the authoritarian neoliberal “center� is institutionalized in the European Union, which imposes economic policy over the heads of the parliaments of the member countries, dictating measures which conform to the choices of Germany and northern Europe, but are increasingly disastrous for the Southern EU members