At the end of 2018, Italy agreed a budget with Brussels and that sorted things out right? Wrong. Italy has debt of EUR 3 Trillion or 3 thousand billion. According to the OECD the Italian economy will contract in 2019 and Italian debt will grow to between 2.5 and 3% of GDP in 2019 despite agreeing a 2% limit with Brussels. Unemployment is forecast to reach 12% in 2019 and public debt will reach 134.8% of GDP. In a nutshell Italy is not making enough money-economic growth is negative- and is spending too much thereby increasing the deficit. Unlike Greece which is a small economy, Italy is the fourth largest European economy and is 30% larger than Russia. Italy will be back at the very top of the agenda in Brussels this year. Expect Italy to weigh heavily on the EUR.
Focus on the oil price with WTI sharply up at $63.08 on the back of civil war threat disruption to the supply in Libya. USD remains a better performer against developed market currencies and weaker against emerging market currencies. In the case of GBP on the back of PM May asking for a 30/6/19 extension and little cross party progress on Brexit over the weekend, GBP weakened in early Asian trading this morning.
Bad news for cat owners including moggy loving James of sgm-fx
Cats according to a study released last week recognise their own names but often ignore their owners when they call them, out of sheer bloody mindedness. It also turns out from a separate study that came out over the weekend (they are like number 11 buses these cat studies) that cat owners are significantly less happy than dog owners. Cheer up James it’s only Miaouw-day !
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
Click Here to Subscribe to the SGM-FX Newsletter
Related Insights
Morning Brief – Data Day
Charles Porter
Thu 30 Nov 2023
Data Day Despite salient data already having been published in China and France so far this morning, we are far from finished with the deluge of data due to reach the market today. The most important of which will be those that we have signposted in earlier briefings: Eurozone and US inflation figures. Given just […]
Morning Brief – Eurozone
Humphrey Percy
Fri 1 Dec 2023
Eurozone That was a surprise: yesterday the EU announced that inflation had fallen to 2.4% which was considerably better than the 2.7% that markets had expected. Despite the ECB saying it was far too early to cut rates, the market has pencilled in the first cut for April. Before getting carried away it should be […]
Morning Brief – UK Labour market
Humphrey Percy
Wed 29 Nov 2023
UK Labour market The Bank of England yesterday broke cover to drive the message home that due to the UK’s labour market remaining tight, it was premature to start talking interest rate cuts and it was not just Governor Bailey who was calling for higher for longer interest rates but also his MEPC colleague Jonathan […]
