4 ms·

Italy was perfectly fine before the 2008 crisis, and Italy's current position would certainly be better without the EU's austerity nonsense post 2008. There jus

Italy was perfectly fine before the 2008 crisis, and Italy's current position would certainly be better without the EU's austerity nonsense post 2008. There just is no intrinsically Italian "mess". Italy had constantly shrinking debt to gdp ratio since the early 90s, right up to 2008: https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/government-debt-to-gdp

killtimeatwork 6y ago
> EU's austerity nonsense post 2008 Can you elaborate? My country (Poland) was in the EU at the time and I didn't notice any "austerity nonsense". Was it related to the eurozone somehow? (we don't have euro in Poland).
- bildung 6y ago
  I mean things like "Stability and Growth Pact", which Poland simply ignored post 2008, which probably is the reason you didn't notice: Poland breached the deficit/GDP rule from 2008-2014, while Italy only did from 2009-2011.[0] Poland also missed the MTO for every year since 2005 (same as Italy). The only core difference is that Poland had a lower absolute debt ratio than Italy when entering the crisis. The relative rises in debt in Poland post 2008 were higher than those of Italy.[1] Polands debt to gdp ratio rose 21.5% from 2007 to 2012, and Italy's ratio rose 20.5% during the same period. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Member_states_by_SGP_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Memb... [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-debt-to-gdp No offence intended, BTW! It's hard to speak about things like these without threads devolving into us-vs-them debates.
tomatocracy 6y ago
Another interpretation is that Italy historically had run its economy on the basis of periodically devaluing the currency to maintain international competitiveness. Not the "correct" way to do things but it worked for them. Joining the Euro stopped Italy from devaluing but they didn't change the way they ran their economy (for good reasons - doing so would have been very very hard) to avoid the need to devalue coming again; and 2008 was the first time this bit them.
- bildung 6y ago
  Keep in mind Italy joined the Euro in 2002, and still managed to steadily reduce debt until the crisis. Full agreement on the importance of the possibility of devaluation, though.

killtimeatwork 6y ago

> EU's austerity nonsense post 2008 Can you elaborate? My country (Poland) was in the EU at the time and I didn't notice any "austerity nonsense". Was it related to the eurozone somehow? (we don't have euro in Poland).

bildung 6y ago
I mean things like "Stability and Growth Pact", which Poland simply ignored post 2008, which probably is the reason you didn't notice: Poland breached the deficit/GDP rule from 2008-2014, while Italy only did from 2009-2011.[0] Poland also missed the MTO for every year since 2005 (same as Italy). The only core difference is that Poland had a lower absolute debt ratio than Italy when entering the crisis. The relative rises in debt in Poland post 2008 were higher than those of Italy.[1] Polands debt to gdp ratio rose 21.5% from 2007 to 2012, and Italy's ratio rose 20.5% during the same period. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Member_states_by_SGP_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Memb... [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-debt-to-gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/government-debt-to-gdp No offence intended, BTW! It's hard to speak about things like these without threads devolving into us-vs-them debates.

tomatocracy 6y ago

Another interpretation is that Italy historically had run its economy on the basis of periodically devaluing the currency to maintain international competitiveness. Not the "correct" way to do things but it worked for them. Joining the Euro stopped Italy from devaluing but they didn't change the way they ran their economy (for good reasons - doing so would have been very very hard) to avoid the need to devalue coming again; and 2008 was the first time this bit them.

bildung 6y ago
Keep in mind Italy joined the Euro in 2002, and still managed to steadily reduce debt until the crisis. Full agreement on the importance of the possibility of devaluation, though.