意大利的经济与政治

-I'm joined by Thomas Mayer. He is the chief economist at Deutsche Bank Group. Thank you so much for joining us here in London. The truth is you are kind of used to political chaos in Italy, so at what point does that become worrying for you and the markets?

-Well, I think the past performance of Italy was much more dependent on the steadiness of the Finance Minister Tremonti and as long as there is the prospect of quickly forming another government, possibly a government of technocrats, that would continue the rather steady fiscal policies and economic policies of Italy. I think the markets are likely to take this in stride.

-So it's your view that whoever takes over, actually the economic policies are gonna be pretty as much the same.

-I would think so. Yes. I mean Tremonti has had a relatively conservative fiscal policy, has kept a lid on the deficit. And as long as the system continues to support this policy line, I don't think that the markets get too spooked if you have another prime minister.

-But he's such a huge figurehead, isn't he for the country? Doesn't that have any impact on how people view the country in terms of investment or not at all really?

-I would think not really. Italy has occasionally had governments of technocrats and actually they are quite good both for economic policies as well as for the market.

-OK. And that's the big political story. Obviously, in Europe right now, just as a key player in economic research in this area, what should we be worried about going into next year in terms of the eurozone and countries like Portugal falling and Angela Merkel not stepping in to bail them out?

-Well, we have a huge economic divergence in the euro area, with last year Germany growing almost 4% and (Greek) Greece probably contracting by more than 4%. So this is going to be a big, big challenge. The other challenge is, obviously, the euro area's sovereign debt crisis. I think that because of this challenge, we will see a step towards greater integration in Europe. This will not change the character of the euro area for what I call a "limited liability company to one of unlimited liabilities for each other". I think this will be preserved. But within the context of that limited liability company that the euro area is, I think we are gonna see a step fall in order to stabilise the euro and set the stage for the beginning of the winding down of these huge economic divergences. But the latter one, this will take a long, long time.

-OK, Thomas, thank you very much indeed for joining us to the programme.