{"id":22697,"date":"2017-02-09T15:49:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T20:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22697"},"modified":"2017-02-09T15:49:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T20:49:09","slug":"italys-banking-crisis-is-even-worse-than-we-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22697","title":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/02\/08\/italys-banking-crisis-is-even-worse-than-we-thought\/\">Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>The insider blame game has begun.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In this late winter of generalized discontent, it is not easy to pinpoint just where the biggest threat to Europe\u2019s increasingly flimsy union lies, so intense is the competition. One obvious contender is the Eurozone\u2019s third largest economy, Italy, which faces a banking crisis, an economic crisis, a debt crisis, and a political crisis all at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>The country\u2019s Five Star Movement is gaining momentum both in the polls and in its efforts to call for a referendum on euro membership. In the meantime, Italy\u2019s newly installed government wants \u2014 indeed, needs \u2014 to bail out a growing number of banks but has neither the money nor the political capital to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Things had gotten so bad that the country\u2019s two bad banks (Atlante I and Atlante II), ostensibly created to stabilize the financial system, were\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/02\/04\/italy-bad-banks-to-save-financial-system-on-verge-of-collapse\/\" target=\"_blank\">themselves on the verge of collapse<\/a>. Turns out that things are even worse than we had thought, following a blistering tirade on Tuesday from Italy\u2019s bad banker-in-chief, Alessandro Penati.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no clear vision of the problem and no strategy,\u201d Penati told a financial conference in Milan, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/uk.reuters.com\/article\/us-italy-banks-atlante-idUKKBN15M28B\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters<\/a>. He said he was virtually working alone on rescues that had revealed \u201chorror stories\u201d within some banks.<\/p>\n<p>In short, the insider blame game has begun.<\/p>\n<p>Penati, whose boutique asset management firm, Quaestio Capital Management, was chosen to oversee the supervision of Atlante in late 2015, directed much of his ire at the banks themselves, in particular Italy\u2019s two largest financial institutions, UniCredit and Intesa Sao Paolo. Atlante\u2019s investors had, he said, shown \u201czero long-sightedness,\u201d after declining to invest more in the fund, which has used 80% of its money to rescue two mid-sized banks in northeast Italy \u2014 Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza. Both these lenders now need more capital.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought The insider blame game has begun. In this late winter of generalized discontent, it is not easy to pinpoint just where the biggest threat to Europe\u2019s increasingly flimsy union lies, so intense is the competition. One obvious contender is the Eurozone\u2019s third largest economy, Italy, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2014,5660,279,281,284,1464,4255],"class_list":["post-22697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banking-crisis","tag-don-quijones","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-italy","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22698,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22697\/revisions\/22698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}