ITALIAN DEBT-the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens: Italy closer to the ECB trap

“Mario Draghi, the ECB President, continues to profess optimism that the Eurozone will recover in the 2nd half of this year. Hopefully, his native country is not the basis for this optimism.”“Last year it stayed within its Maastricht deficit limit of 3% of GDP. Indeed, the government had a 2.2% primary surplus. And yet public debt rose, as a % of GDP, from 127% to 132.6%! Which means that Italy must keep borrowing (in net terms) even if it has the largest primary surplus in the Eurozone and manages to stay within the Maastricht deficit limits. In euro terms, it needs to pay annually 85 billion in interest (on a €2 trillion debt) of which it must borrow €50 billion.”“From this perspective, the Renzi government, but also its neoliberal detractors, are in a bind. The only solution (i.e. in confronting Merkel) is outside their remit and imagination. Thus, they keep falling deeper and deeper into the vortex. Meanwhile, Germany’s polity shows no signs of even an interest in discussing the substance.”