Italy: no appetite for “self-help” policies

Italy's huge public debt pile and high financing needs mean it could use some deep-pocketed investors, but its insistence on a budget that might break EU rules doesn’t make it attractive.

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Italy: the eurozone's Achilles' heel
(Image credit: fotoVoyager)

"Italy's on the ropes," says Marcus Ashworth on Bloomberg. Its huge public debt pile, worth around 130% of GDP, and high consequent financing needs, mean its bond market could use some "deep-pocketed patrons". However, Italy's insistence on a budget that might break EU rules on deficit limits doesn't make it particularly attractive. Italy's government has called for a "budget-busting package", which includes "a flat tax for the right and universal income for the left". That would swell the deficit to 7% of GDP, way past the 3% permitted under the rules of the euro, says Randall Forsyth on Barron's.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.