In 1972, a time of great stress in the White House and in the Italian economy, President Richard Nixon asked to reflect on the fate of Italy’s currency, famously snapped: “I don’t give a shit about the lira!” His line, recorded amid his Watergate travails, points to Italy being of peripheral concern to the world’s great ones.
It isn’t now. The lira has gone; the country’s entry into the eurozone on January 1, 1999, has made it a country that the great powers do have to care about. After Brexit it will be the third- largest economy in the European Union , eighth largest in the world with a nominal GDP of nearly $2.2 trillion, a population of 60 million, a member of NATO and of the Group of Seven. Were it to default on its more than $2.6 trillion public debt, it could not be “saved” like Greece. Yet now, the matter of saving Italy (from itself) is squarely in front of its fellow members of the EU.
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