Monthly Archive - February 2010
February 26, 2010
As Europe comes to grips with its debt problems, investors are taking a closer look at Italy’s situation and they don’t seem too pleased. It’s led to jittery investors selling off Italy’s exchange traded fund (ETF), lest they get caught in the maelstrom. After the brouhaha with Greece’s rather large deficit ...
February 25, 2010
Italy did more than Greece to mask the state of its finances to secure euro zone entry, Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos said, adding that Germany's history made it ill-placed to criticise his country. The European Union has asked Greece to explain reports that it engaged in derivatives trades with ...
February 24, 2010
The Italian government has softened cuts it plans to make to incentives in Italy's booming solar energy sector, according to the latest draft of a decree that Reuters obtained on Monday. For large solar plants of over 1 megawatt, the proposed tariff as of Jan. 1, 2011, is 0.313 euros per ...
February 23, 2010
In the space of a few weeks, Italy has witnessed bouts of violence involving immigrants that seem to be lifted straight from Hollywood films, starting with Mississippi Burning replayed in Calabria last month and, on the streets of Milan last week, West Side Story. After hundreds of African fruit pickers were ...
February 22, 2010
Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti has a “firm hand” on Italy’s public finances, keeping deficits down and managing the euro area’s second-highest debt even as the economy contracted, Goldman Sachs Corp. said. Tremonti has helped assure that “the country has emerged from the financial crisis without serious damage to the sustainability of ...
February 19, 2010
Corruption is rising dramatically in Italy and legal sanctions are no longer a sufficient deterrent, Italy's state auditor said on Wednesday, fuelling a mounting debate on the morality of public life. The Rome-based Audit Court, which oversees and controls possible irregularities in public spending, said cases of corruption increased by 229 ...
February 18, 2010
Italy’s tax-evasion amnesty has drawn 60 billion euros ($82 billion) from Switzerland, accounting for the majority of collections from the measure. Of the total from Switzerland, 25 billion euros consists of “physical repatriations” from the neighboring country and the remainder represents declarations, the Rome-based Bank of Italy said in a statement ...
February 17, 2010
Italy's economy shrank by 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, inverting the growth it had experienced in the third quarter, according to national statistics agency Istat in a preliminary forecast. Italian gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.2 percent compared to the third quarter when adjusted for seasonal ...
February 16, 2010
Despite a staggering public debt and a stagnant economy, Italy is an unlikely target for speculators thanks to moderate public spending and conservative investments by banks and individuals, economists say. "I don't think there is a risk of speculation" against Italy, said Giuliano Noci of the Milan polytechnic's business school, adding ...
February 15, 2010
Europe's post-recession recovery hit a roadblock on Friday as German economic growth unexpectedly halted and Italy went into reverse in the final quarter of 2009, knocking total euro zone GDP growth almost flat. The weak data comes at a bad time for the single currency bloc as governments struggle to sort ...
