ECB Hands Italy An Ultimatum: ‘Obey EU Budget Rules Or We Won’t Save You’

 

With the Washington Post stepping up to put a floor under US stocks Thursday afternoon by reporting that President Trump would meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at next month’s G-20 summit (while the headline soothed the market, it doesn’t change the fact that, as with everything involving the Trump administration, this too remains subject to change), investors have apparently overlooked the latest ominous headlines out of Italy. To wit, Reuters reported that the ECB won’t come to Italy’s rescue if its government or banks run out of cash unless the Italian government first secures a bailout from the European Union. Of course, this would almost certainly require that the populist coalition end its ongoing game of fiscal chicken with Brussels and abandon its  dreams of lowering the retirement age and extending a basic income to the Italian people – policies that would effectively secure a political future for M5S and the League. 

In effect, the ECB’s latest trial balloon is tantamount to blackmail: Either the Italians agree to fall back in line and obey European budgetary guidelines, or the central bank will sit back and watch as bond yields surge, providing the ratings agencies even more ammunition to cut Italian debt to junk – effectively guaranteeing a Greece-style banking crisis as the liquidity taps are turned off.

Italian economy shattered as one in three jobless GIVE UP searching for work

A THIRD of jobless Italians gave up looking for work at the start of the year, amid rising fears for Italy’s economy.

A whopping 37.1 per cent of unemployed Italians joined the ranks of those who have stopped looking for a job altogether between the last three months of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, according to Eurostat data.

The number of those now classed as inactive is double the European average of 18.9 per cent.

Mario Draghi: Goodbye ECB, Hello Italian Presidency?

While the entire financial world is hanging on to every Mario Draghi word in hope Europe finally improves the market’s (if not the economy’s) “fundamentals” to new record highs, and joins the rest of the “developed” world’s central banks in injecting trillions of liquidity into the Div/0 P/E stocks “whatever it takes” (because in a world where only multiple expansion is left, the ECB is the last wildcard at least until the US is dragged right back into the global recession and the Fed admits any pipe dreams of a rate hike in 2015 were just that), something far more different may be taking place behind the scenes. According to at least one journalist, the Fiscal Times’ Patrick Smith, “Draghi appears set to leave Frankfurt and return to his native Italy the first chance he gets.”

Has the former Bank of Italy exec and Goldman employee had enough of fighting Germany tooth and nail over every proposal, if mostly for dramatic media consumption? “Impossible” most would say, and yet…

[Draghi’s departure] could be as soon as January, depending on a variety of circumstances in Frankfurt and Rome, according to well-placed sources who include a prominent private investor and a senior journalist in Rome. “Draghi wants out, fed up and stymied by Berlin,” one of these sources wrote in a note just before the weekend. In a subsequent message: “I am hearing from several [official] sources that he is entirely fed up with the monetary politics he confronts.”

1,000 companies going bankrupt in Italy every day as country faces full-scale ‘credit emergency

Italy’s industry chiefs have warned that the country faces a “full credit emergency” as thousands of companies run out of critical funding, threatening a slide into deeper depression.

Confindustria, the business federation, said that 29% of Italian firms cannot meet “operational expenses” and are starved of liquidity. It said that a “third phase of the credit crunch” is under way that matches the shocks in 2008-09 and again in 2011.

Turk – 15,000 Tons Of Western Central Bank Gold Is Gone

Today James Turk once again shocked King World News when he stated, “… in 1997 over (a stunning) 2,000 tons of gold moved out of Great Britain.”  Turk added, “Now since Great Britain is not a gold miner, we know that gold had to come out of the Bank of England (where they store other countries gold), and it probably went into Zurich (Switzerland) for what’s called ‘leasing’ but I use the word ‘lending,’ or lending into the market.”

But first, here is what Turk had to say about his last interview titled, “The Entire German Gold Hoard Is Gone,” which has received an incredible amount of attention around the world:  “Yes, it’s getting increasing attention, Eric, and rightly so.  There has been a lot of deception about how much gold is really in central bank vaults.

The reason why there is this deception, if you look at a balance sheet of a central bank like the Bundesbank, Bank of Italy or the Bank of England, they basically say gold in the vault and gold out on loan, they show it as one line item.  They call it, ‘gold and gold receivables.’

Anybody who understands generally accepted accounting principles knows that ‘cash’ is different from an ‘account receivable.’