Failing on Greece, EU must ring-fence Italy

by Jeremy Gaunt and Alan Wheatley

Reuters
November 9, 2011

One message from financial markets has become quite clear: attempts by the euro zone to ring-fence Greece and stop contagion to other, more significant economies has failed.

The job now in Berlin, Brussels and Paris is not to worry about Greece, which is all but lost, or even bailed-out Dublin and Lisbon.

Instead it is to stop Italy, the world's eighth-largest economy, its third-largest debt market, and a founding member of the European project, from bringing down France and the euro zone as a whole.

"In a sense Greece, Portugal, Ireland have been side shows," said Ken Courtis, an investment manager who used to be vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs in Asia.

"With Italy, we are moving to the main event. There is simply no way that Italy can conduct the massive refundings it has in the coming weeks with this situation. With these developments, the zone of global risk is set to dramatically increase."

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