so it was you martin, making that great comment a l'orange. well done.

while living here i muse sometimes what gives italy the right (?) to run such huge deficits, what exceptionalism puffs up politicians to assume so rosy an economic future, compared to other european countries.

is it because they feel they have a (swiftly crumbling) america backing them?

that they trust that even if people have to walk over the alps to get here, the food, wine, song and historical monuments and art will guarantee eternal touristic income, no matter how much is currently being paved over, or how badly managed those resources -and the institutions- are being mismanaged?

that for all the rest of weather-deprived yurp, italy will always generate a romantic longing, that will keep the payments flowing, so they can dance out blithely on the end of the deficit-limb?

i can't think of any others. the uk has a similar sense of exceptionalism, reflected in other ways, france and germany have thankfully got over themselves to point the way for the rest.

martin's asides about italy are saddeningly apposite, why does the EU not come down harder on these twisted clowns in charge here?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty