Bloomberg/Alessandra Migliaccio and John Ainger/3-30-2020
“Two decades since the euro began, one of the principal worries of its founders is materializing as the coronavirus rages through the region’s third-largest economy. The longstanding suspicion that Italy’s profligate borrowing could ultimately become the whole of Europe’s problem was the recurring nightmare of German finance officials throughout the 1990s.”
USAGOLD note: Italy’s national debt stands at $244 billion and its debt to GDP ratio is nearly 135%. It is facing two major problems at this point in time: the virus and a rapidly developing economic meltdown. But Italy is not the only problem in Europe. There is another directly across the Ionian Sea that was once viewed as a terminal threat to the euro and the European Union.
Chart courtesy of TradingEconomics.com
