国际英语资讯:Italy suffers rocky day on financial markets as EU asks for budget clarification_时事

国际英语资讯:Italy suffers rocky day on financial markets as EU asks for budget clarification

In a joint press conference with Tria on Thursday, Moscovici was at pains to stress that "the European Commission is not Italy's enemy" and that its purpose is not to criticize the ways in which eurozone members decide to spend money, but rather to make sure that each country plays by the rules that everyone has agreed to.

After all, if one eurozone member defaults, the others may have to step in to bail them out, as happened with Greece in 2010.

In an Oct. 15 report, the Bank of Italy said that at the end of 2017, the nation's public debt stood at 2.26 trillion euros, or 131.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). According to ISTAT national statistics agency, Italy's 2017 GDP amounted to 1.7 trillion euros (+1.6 percent over the previous year).

This means that Italy owes far more than it produces, and therefore it lives on borrowed money -- a fact that policymakers must deal with if they want to finance their budgets without alienating investors and driving the country into an economic tailspin.

However on Friday, the news on financial markets spelled trouble for Italy: the spread between Italy's benchmark 10-year government bonds and their German counterparts -- a key measure of investor confidence in the country -- jumped to 340 basis points in morning trading before ending the day at 301 points.

For comparison, the spread hovered at 130 basis points in March, just before a national election which ultimately produced the current euroskeptic coalition government that was seated in early June.