Mediobanca is Italy's second biggest bank. It does not call for a withdrawal from EMU and a return to the lira, stocially accepting that discipline is the only way forward. Yet the logic of their Magnum Opus is that Italy would be far better off outside EMU, and the implicit threat is that Italy will have to do so if the Northern creditor powers persist with their destructive regime.

Italy is not a basket case. Its net international investment position is -30pc of GDP, compared with -92pc for Spain, and -100pc for Portugal. It has very low mortgage debt. Their median wealth is €173,500, making them four times richer than Germans at €51,400.

It is the most virtuous of the big EMU states, with a primary surplus of 2.5pc of GDP. This of course means it can leave the euro whenever it wants without a funding crisis, and it is big enough to weather the shock.

Everything comes down to the national mood in the end. There was a time when the cause of Europe was unquestioned in Italy, but the long slump has taken its toll. An Ipsos poll this week found that a record 74pc of Italians are dissatisfied with the euro. It is a loveless marriage now. One more spat with Berlin and it will turn acrid.

Europe's leaders can stop the rot at any time by embarking on a reflation strategy that entirely changes the contours of the crisis and lifts the South off the reefs. But if they do not do so - and there is no sign yet - Italians will be forced to take back their own sovereign destiny.

weird but true, berlu's band of thieves and scoundrels are in sync with grillo on this.

i don't see a political tent big enough to fit them both into though ever happening!

bilderburger letta has no answers except to continue debt slavery...

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