We know all of the dry tinder. The big pile of external liabilities piled high in unproductive assets protected by the firebreak of public guarantees from a clean public sheet.
But the next downturn could bring something that will set fire to all of this virtually overnight: Italexit. Via Albert Edwards, king bear:
The orthodox view is that the Italian government is pursuing a ruinous economic policy and an unfolding crisis of confidence will drive up Italian bond yields, threatening contagion and a repeat of the 2011/12 eurozone crisis. Hence the orthodox view is that the newly elected Italian government must sing to the EC’s fiscally austere song-sheet.
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
