{"id":38838,"date":"2018-10-07T12:20:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T17:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38838"},"modified":"2018-10-07T12:20:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T17:20:21","slug":"italys-debt-crisis-flares-up-banks-get-hit-as-showdown-with-the-eu-intensifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38838","title":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s Debt Crisis Flares Up, Banks Get Hit, as Showdown with the EU Intensifies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Italy\u2019s Debt Crisis Flares Up, Banks Get Hit, as Showdown with the EU Intensifies<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Who will blink first?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A serious showdown is brewing in the Eurozone as Italy\u2019s anti-establishment coalition government takes on the EU establishment in a struggle that could have major ramifications for Europe\u2019s monetary union. The cause of the discord is the Italian government\u2019s plan to expand Italy\u2019s budget for 2019, in contravention of previous budget agreements with Brussels.<\/p>\n

The government has set a public deficit target for next year of 2.4% of GDP, three times higher than the previous government\u2019s pledge. It\u2019s a big ask for a country that already boasts a debt-to-GDP ratio of 131%, the second highest in Europe behind Greece. To justify its ambitious \u201canti-poverty\u201d spending plans, proposed tax cuts, and pension reforms, the government claims that Italy\u2019s economic growth will outperform EU forecasts.<\/p>\n

Brussels is having none of it. EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker urged Italy\u2019s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria to desist. \u201cAfter having really been able to cope with the Greek crisis, we\u2019ll end up in the same crisis in Italy,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cOne such crisis has been enough\u2026 If Italy wants further special treatment, that would mean the end of the euro. So you have to be very strict.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday ECB President Mario Draghi held a private meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome, at which he reportedly raised concerns<\/a> about Italy\u2019s public finances, the upcoming budget bill, and related stock-exchange and bond-market turbulence.<\/p>\n

The meeting evoked memories<\/a> of the backroom machinations that Draghi, together with his predecessor, Jean Claude Trichet, undertook to engineer the downfall of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi in 2011 and his replacement with technocrat Mario Monte, after Berlusconi had posited pulling Italy out of the euro during Europe\u2019s sovereign debt crisis.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italy\u2019s Debt Crisis Flares Up, Banks Get Hit, as Showdown with the EU Intensifies Who will blink first? A serious showdown is brewing in the Eurozone as Italy\u2019s anti-establishment coalition government takes on the EU establishment in a struggle that could have major ramifications for Europe\u2019s monetary union. The cause of the discord is the […]<\/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":[195,4106,5660,233,279,282,284,285,1167,1464,4255],"class_list":["post-38838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-debt-crisis","tag-don-quijones","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-union","tag-eurozone","tag-greece","tag-italy","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838","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=38838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38839,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838\/revisions\/38839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}