Markets Are Melting In Response To Italy Implosion

[Volitzer]

Markets Are Melting In Response To Italy Implosion


Business Insider
November 9, 2011


The opening bell has only just rung in NYC, and already it’s been a long day.

It started yesterday with the market in the US surging on the news that Berlusconi would be resigning.

But the euphoria proved to be very shortlived. A margin hike for traders holding Italian debt reversed whatever post-Berlusconi benefit the markets expected to see.

Yields are exploding in Italy, surging well beyond 7%.

And it’s not just Italy: Spreads are blowing out in France and Spain too.

Everyone is panicking. The Dow is off over 220, and the banks are getting smashed.

We’ll be updating this all day here.

Update 9:50: The Dow is off 270.

Upate 10:36: Here’s a look at who’s getting smashed in this selloff.

Update 11:04: markets have staunched the bleeding a touch. Dow off merely 250. George Papandreou is announcing his resignation right now.

Upate 1:23: After an attempt at a comeback, markets are deep in the red again. News that the Greeks still haven’t settled on a new PM isn’t helping anything.

UPDATE 1:57: Things are really getting ugly again, and we’re at the lows of the day. Dow is off 350. The bank stocks are getting lsammed. Both Jefferies and Morgan Stanley — two banks that have been seen as Euro vulnerable — are both off 7%.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/markets-are-melting-dow-off-270-italy-is-exploding.html

[Krista Davenport]

Yeah, but look on the bright side:  soon we'll be rid of that lecherous old geezer Berlusconi!  Italy can finally get itself a Prime Minister that isn't a laughingstock.

[Volitzer]

I heard they are putting in a Bilderberg member to replace Berlusconi !!!

[Volitzer]

Kissinger’s ‘Favorite Communist’ Paves Way for Mario Monti to Govern Italy
       

Jeffrey Donovan
Bloomberg
November 22, 2011

Italy’s new government, headed by former European Union Commissioner Mario Monti, has an unlikely supporter in President Giorgio Napolitano, an ex-communist who once praised the Soviet Union for crushing the 1956 reformist movement in Hungary.

Napolitano, whose post is usually ceremonial, earlier this month emerged as the key Italian contact for foreign leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as Italian bond spreads widened to a record during a deepening debt and political crisis.

As Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s majority unraveled amid plummeting investor confidence, Napolitano, 86, sounded out Italy’s political and business elites to build a consensus on the country’s future. Berlusconi resigned Nov. 12 and Monti was sworn in four days later.

Napolitano, who was part of the anti-Fascist resistance and helped publish Marxist writings during World War II, in July of this year backed a call by employers’ lobby Confindustria to make economic growth a pillar of policy alongside fiscal rigor. That kind of pragmatism led former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to once call the Italian politician “my favorite communist,” Napolitano told Corriere della Sera in a 2001 interview.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/kissinger%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98favorite-communist%e2%80%99-paves-way-for-mario-monti-to-govern-italy.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-22/kissinger-s-favorite-communist-paves-way-for-monti-to-lead-italy.html