As Balboni noted, Italy’s sovereign debt pile, the largest in Europe at over €2.9 trillion, makes it vulnerable to any European market panic, no matter how tight it’s been with its purse-strings.
“We may argue the markets are unfair, but it’s useless,” said Carlo Cottarelli, a former Italian senator and senior IMF official who now directs the economic and social sciences program at the Catholic University of Milan. “It’s a fact of life when there is a shock to the EU economy, given our public debt. Even if it’s not fair.”
But the truth is that Italy’s…