Until a couple of days ago, I was very nearly incommunicado for two weeks. We took the kids to Italy on holiday, you see, and found ourselves in a place with no television, no internets, not even mobile-phone reception. The tiny shop at the site doesn’t even stock English-language (or any other non-Italian) newspapers, and [...]

Very hard to interpret the information we are receiving right now. Much of it may well be aimed at the terrorists themselves so it is also perhaps better not to dig too deeply.
There are, however, a number of rival (but possibly) compatible theories. One of these, and it is the one I am following most [...]

There is a pretty mixed bag of numbers coming in at the moment. The German economy shows some signs of a recovery of activity (here), as is the French one (here). It is important to understand however that trend growth in Germany is now extremely low, and the economy is very export dependent. The [...]

For 19 American intelligence operatives assigned to apprehend a radical Islamic preacher in Milan two years ago, the mission was equal parts James Bond and taxpayer-financed Italian holiday, according to an Italian investigation of the man’s disappearance. …
During January 2003, they were regular patrons at the Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan, which bills itself [...]

The Italian Northern League have, as promised, launched their ‘bring back the Lira’ referendum campaign. Whilst at this stage there is something vaguely comic in all this, remember it is a wild card which will be floating around if Italy’s economic crisis worsens.
The Italian Northern League party launched a campaign to revive the lira at [...]

Things really are starting to hot up: The European Commission said Wednesday it is investigating the reasons why Italy’s central bank intervened in foreign takeover bids for Italian banks.
The European Union’s head office said it had received a letter from the Bank of Italy explaining its actions in the recent takeover bids by the [...]

This is a very convenient moment to put up this post. Alan Greenspan has just admitted that he’s human like the rest of us, and that he doesn’t have a very good explanation for why long-term interest rates have been falling at a time when he and his Fed colleagues have been busy raising [...]

Roberto Maroni is back in the Italian press again today, and with another interview. This interview is in ilResto del Carlino. (Interestingly enough they are running an online poll, and the result was running at 51.7% euro to 48.3% lira). Unfortunately the interview is in Italian. I have translated a few extracts under the [...]

This week promises to be another ‘busy’ one. Today the EU finance ministers (Ecofin) are meeting in Luxembourg, to discuss the condition of the common currency after last week’s ‘battering’ in the press and in the financial markets. Also headed for Luxembourg is EU Economics Commissioner Joaquim Almunia. Amongst other items he will have one [...]

But in this case the vote would be about Italy’s continuing membership of the euro-zone, rather than the EU constitution. Now before going any further, I feel the need to advise extreme caution in the face of such developments.
In the first place the call comes from the Italian Labor Minister - and member of the [...]