Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during last week's vote on new austerity measures

What ails Italy?

If one reads into the minutiae of last night’s Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Italian debt, it wouldn’t be hard to come away thinking that there was not a whole lot wrong with the eurozone’s third largest economy. It’s a “high-income sovereign with a diversified economy and few external imbalances”, S&P notes.

In addition, private sector debt – which crippled Ireland and Spain, when those debts moved onto government books via bank bail-outs – is low. Left unsaid by S&P (but highlighted by Moody’s when it announced its own review in June) is the fact Italy also has a primary budget surplus, which means it actually brings in more money than it spends, if you don’t count interest payments on debt.

According to S&P, then, what ails Italy is as much political as it is economic. Read more