Italy Remains On Red Alert

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The danger that Italy could be the next country to be attacked is certainly being taken very seriously there. Corriera della Sera leads with “Blitz antiterrorismo in tutta Italia” (which I imagine I don’t need to translate). For english language readers AFP are carrying this story:

Italian police were carrying out a country-wide anti-terrorism operation early Wednesday, a day after the government announced a series of measures aimed at preventing a London-style attack, the ANSA news agency reported.

Hundreds of police and paramilitary Carabinieri officers were searching homes and buildings in several cities in northern Italy as well as in the southern port of Naples and on the island of Sicily, the agency said.

Just returning briefly to the economic implications of terrorism, I want to re-iterate that stock market reactions form only part of the picture, there is also a ‘real economy’ to think about, and here consumer confidence will be important. What will be the impact in the UK of the fact they were suicide bombers (for example). The jury is still out, and will be till late autumn at the earliest. Italy is another case in point. An attack now might well have serious economic consequences, indeed even the threat of one (which is where we are now) complicates the economic picture significantly.

Update 20:15 CET

The Italian Interior Minister has announced that 174 people have been arrested.

This entry was posted in A Fistful Of Euros, Terrorism and tagged by Edward Hugh. Bookmark the permalink.

About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

1 thought on “Italy Remains On Red Alert”

  1. Looks as if France are taking the threat seriously too. Their action could spell the end of Schengen.

    La France a activ? apr?s les attentats de Londres la clause de sauvegarde des accords de Schengen, qui permet de r?tablir temporairement les contr?les aux fronti?res ? l’int?rieur de l’UE, a indiqu? mercredi le ministre de l’Int?rieur Nicolas Sarkozy ? Bruxelles.

    “Si on ne renforce pas les contr?les lorsqu’il y a cinquante morts ? Londres, je ne sais pas quand je le ferai”, a d?clar? M. Sarkozy.

    La clause de sauvegarde est r?guli?rement activ?e ? l’occasion d’un ?v?nement attendu, comme un sommet politique ou un ?v?nement sportif.

    From La France a r?tabli les contr?les aux fronti?res Schengen (Sarkozy)

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