Technically Italy has plunged into bail-out land and has breached the seven per cent interest rate lending charge that sank Ireland, Portugal and Greece before.
It is borrowing at an unsustainable level. Berlusconi is supposedly on his way out but nobody really believes the old brigand has gone until he has, and given that he continues to control the vast majority of television news outlets in Italy, and a good number of magazines and newspapers, he could yet pull the rug from his own departure. Faisal Islam's slide rule is in meltdown, and his calculator is in rebellion, but by seven o'clock he will come up with a very full account of what's wrong and the scale of the threat to the rest of us. If this catastrophe fails to resolve nobody knows where we shall be come Christmas, regardless of the fact we are not in the eurozone.
