{"id":39514,"date":"2018-10-22T05:56:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T10:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39514"},"modified":"2018-10-22T05:56:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T10:56:29","slug":"a-storm-is-brewing-in-europe-italy-and-its-public-finances-are-at-the-center-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39514","title":{"rendered":"A\u00a0Storm is Brewing in Europe: Italy and Its Public Finances Are at the Center of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0Storm is Brewing in Europe: Italy and Its Public Finances Are at the Center of It<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo Source Giuseppe Milo | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Yet the problem with Italy is not the problem that the European Commission<\/u> or financial markets see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Rome is planning an expansionary budget \u2013 just what Italy needs and just the opposite of what Brussels and the financial speculators in the bond markets<\/u> are expecting or demanding.<\/div>\n
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Brussels wants \u201cfiscal consolidation\u201d. That is, for Rome to reduce its deficit \u2013 the annual gap between spending and taxation \u2013 so it can start paying down its huge public debt, which is 131% of GDP, proportionately the highest in the euro zone after Greece\u2019s.<\/div>\n
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The government of the League and 5-Star Movement has raised the target for next year\u2019s deficit to 2.4% of gross domestic product. That is comfortably below the EU\u2019s 3% ceiling, but up sharply from a targeted 1.8% this year, flouting EU rules which call on highly-indebted countries like Italy, to narrow the deficit steadily towards a balanced budget.<\/div>\n
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Rome\u2019s budget includes a reversal of an increase in the retirement age enacted in 2011 by a previous Democratic Party Government. This is a genuinely progressive and an economically sensible move, as it should force employers to high more young people sooner, helping to reduce the 31% youth jobless rate.<\/div>\n
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The budget also contains a so-called \u2018citizen\u2019s wage\u2019, aimed primarily at the young unemployed who currently have to rely on their families for financial support. Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio has said the proposed payment of up to 780 euros a month will \u201cabolish poverty\u201d. That\u2019s hyperbole, but any attempt to cut the numbers, which have tripled in the last 10 years, while those in \u201cabsolute poverty\u201d have risen to 5.1 million (or 8.4 percent of the population), has to be welcomed.<\/div>\n
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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0Storm is Brewing in Europe: Italy and Its Public Finances Are at the Center of It Photo Source Giuseppe Milo | CC BY 2.0 Yet the problem with Italy is not the problem that the European Commission or financial markets see. Rome is planning an expansionary budget \u2013 just what Italy needs and just 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":[2,5],"tags":[95,5493,279,281,2535,284,1849,22390,1464,22488,1024,22487],"class_list":["post-39514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-brussels","tag-counterpunch","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-commission","tag-european-union","tag-financial-markets","tag-italian-budget","tag-italy","tag-public-finances","tag-rome","tag-tom-gill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514","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=39514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39515,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514\/revisions\/39515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}