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Italy is quietly sinking the value of the €.

Last night the M5S and Lega parties agreed on a coalition. They have several goals in common.

Borrowing money to make the life of the common man easier
Throwing out the rules of the ECB and the EU stability pact
Forcing the EU to ditch the €250 billion of Italian government debt it holds

Unsurprisingly the € is sinking fast. Whilst the £ continues to drop against the $, it is rising rapidly, again, against the €.

Not surprising really as Italy is the 3rd largest economy in the Eurozone, 4th largest in the EU and has debt to 132% of GDP already.

You have to feel for Carney, if only a little bit. He thought he'd done it, dropped the value of the £ against the €, at least for a month or two until we could see the real underlying trend without winter storms to mess it up.

All good fun. But you do have to look for it.

Suff wrote:All good fun. But you do have to look for it.

It's certainly an interesting subject, but I wouldn't call it fun.
Perhaps I need to look harder.

Thankfully I do not obsess about such things.

Thankfully I do not obsess about such things.

Neither do I.

I leave that to the BBC ……

TheOstrich wrote:I leave that to the BBC ……

Well, yes, I did mean the press and the media. I am avoiding more news than I am reading...

The Beeb has a tendency to ignore bad news from EU countries. I remember once rioting broke out in Paris. The BBC reported on the riots - for five seconds - after the third night of riots.

So the election of populists in Italy and their anti-EU rhetoric will go under reported (even if said rhetoric has been scaled down).

You can't blame the Italian public for voting for fringe parties. Their mainstream parties have delivered large scale youth unemployment, a migrant crisis, an economy that hasn't grown in fifteen years and stagnant wages. They deserve a break and I hope they get one.

cromwell wrote:They deserve a break and I hope they get one.

They do. Sadly it is a left wing message they are being sold. Minimum "wage" for jobseekers and workers. Better rights. More state support. Lower taxes for people and businesses. All, it would appear, to be funded by the EU giving up on €250bn of EU debt that Italy holds. They sure as hell won't be borrowing it as their credit is maxed to the wall and the "Bank" (ECB), is managing them financially.

Makes me want to go to Italy and sell a few second hand cars. Got to be a great market if they bought that story..

Hence the drop in value of the € which is driving up fuel prices even higher than the UK after our drop against the $ with Carney's intervention.