Growth slump may force Italy out of the Eurozone!

Growth slump may force Italy out of the Eurozone!

www.telegraph.co.uk

Italy is sliding into a deep structural crisis and risks being forced out of Europe's monetary union as the region's economic downturn gathers pace, according to a new report by Capital Economics.

Over the last decade, the country has failed to reform its labour product markets sufficiently to cope with the rigours of euro membership and is now caught in a spiral of decline as the working population starts to shrink. Productivity growth has slowed to 0.5pc a year.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Thats painful, very painful to see indeed. Italy has always be at the forefront of Europes intergration, and now it seems that its failure to deal with internal issues may tear it from the eurozone currency.

I don't like europe or its socialist utopian nightmare it wants us all enslaved in, but Italy is a beautiful country with beautiful people. I hope its economic future is brighter. 0.5% growth? Thats shocking!

www.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I doubt if Italy or any other country will be forced out of the EuroZone, there was too much coruption involved in the first place to get a lot of the countries in,
Greece didn't actually fullfil the initial criteria ..if my memory serve me right... sounds like a song that!

The Euro was a terrible idea not only for Italy, but also Spain and Portugal. I wonder at some of those former eastern-block countries wanting in the way they do. Their economy is even more mid-tech than Italy's.

And culturally it is having a diminishing effect in that most of the cities in Europe now have a homogenized feel. If you are not in the city-centers, where iconic architecture is more common, you can be almost anywhere in Europe i.e. I was in Helsinki in December and looked around the boulevard and nothing in my sight-line would have distinguished it from a boulevard in the 17th in Paris or Berlin or Zurich, etc.

It reminds me of the U.S. in that respect, once you leave a city center everything looks the same. Except here it is strip malls and chains.

[edit on 30-7-2008 by TheWayISeeIt]

WTF!!!

Another sign of the Global meltdown... even though this has been on the cards for a decade, it still joins the rest of the weakened EU economies after the US idiot banks fiasco.

Spanish unemployment is rising by almost 70,000 a month

France's Insee consumer confidence plunged to a 21-year low in July.

Italy - now on the cusp of its fourth recession this decade

Irish economic growth is at 3%, down from 5% in 2007, and expecting 0.5% growth for 2009

UK economic growth at 2% this year and expected at less than 1.75% in 2009

I wonder how bad it will get???

If Italy dropped the Euro I bet it would experience about a 100% increase in tourism, which would help the situation at least some.

Peachy - (for some reason my reply to: is not working). I could not agree more! I can tell you used to appreciate the shopping value of the Lira.

Ahh, what I would not give for the days of empty Rome in August and sales in Lira....sigh... And I would not describe myself as a 'fashionista' so one can only imagine the hardship for you

Italy is better off out the Eurozone anyways.

The EU hates Italy for allowing neo-fascists into the Cabinet and for passing discriminative laws against immigrants. I wouldn't be surprised if they were asked to leave - most Italians want out.

Britain is proving why it's important to keep control of your interest rates.