{"id":39461,"date":"2018-10-21T07:18:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-21T12:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39461"},"modified":"2018-10-21T07:18:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-21T12:18:59","slug":"the-european-financial-establishment-has-just-declared-war-on-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39461","title":{"rendered":"The European financial establishment has just declared war on Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The European financial establishment has just declared war on Italy<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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This week in a CNBC interview Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the former Dutch minister of finance who served as the President of the Eurogroup, declared war on the Italian government.<\/strong> The European financial establishment is prepared to destroy the banking system and cause the Italian economy to implode. Like a Mafia boss, Dijsselbloem warned that Italy could run into trouble if it does not comply with Brussels\u2019 directives. Of course, his statement was cloaked in diplomatic language:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Italian crisis becomes a major crisis, it will mainly implode into the Italian economy \u2026 as opposed to spreading around Europe,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause of the way that the Italian economy and the Italian banks are financed, it\u2019s going to be an implosion rather than an explosion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

For a man of this format it is unusual to publicly expose Italy as a state in a weak negotiating position or try to act as a scaremonger. We have never seen anything remotely like that, so we think that the utterance could only serve the purpose of giving the green light to the financial markets to orchestrate an attack on Italian bonds so as to drive Italian yield up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there is gonna be a role for the markets, I mean if you look at what Italy needs in funding next year alone we are talking about over 250 billion Euro, refinancing part of the stock of their debt and also, of course, these new spending plans. So markets will really have to look at that very critically.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n