by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /There is no doubt about it: Italy's economic situation has worsened considerably during the current quarter. Only last week the OECD forecast that Italy's gross domestic product is likely to fall by 4.2 percent in 2009. This follows hot on the heals of an earlier statement where the OECD said the situation in Italy this year and next was "much worse" than it had previously thought, and that Italy would not come out of its recession until "sometime" in 2010 at the earliest. According to the earlier forecast the OECD expected GDP to fall this year by one percent and then by a further 0.8 percent in 2010.br /br /The Bank of Italy has also changed its forecast, and now suggest that GDP this year will fall by 2.6 percent. In January (the last time they revised their Italy forecast), the IMF forecast ...

By Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /The Italian economy continued to contract sharply in the third quarter of 2008 as exports fell sharply - declining at the fastest rate in three years - under the impact of a global slump which weighed down on foreign demand for Italian products, and pushed the Italian economy into its worst recession since at least 1975. Sales of Italian goods abroad fell 1.6 percent from the previous quarter, their biggest decline since 2005.br /br /Pressure is of course on the government to offer a fiscal reponse to the problem, but given Italy's outstanding debt issues and the fact that a large part of the problem is long term structural and not cyclical it is hard to see much of note happening, and indeed Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti's statement this week that additional stimulus packages were pretty pointless could be read as more of an admission ...

There was virtually nothing in the price action of gold in the Far East on Friday that suggested that there would be an explosion in the gold price on Friday morning at the Comex open. I’d gone to bed at 5:00 a.m. New York time after filing my Thursday rant that you read yesterday morning. True, at the usual 3:00 a.m. time, gold had peaked at the lofty price of $759. But two hours later the price was still at $759.

So when I hit the ‘On’ button on the computer yesterday morning, I was hoping and praying that we would be away to the races when the Kitco gold chart came up…and we were. I’m encouraged by the fact that gold managed to finish on its highs in electronic trading after the Comex had closed for the day. The markets are very thin there…especially on Fridays…and it would have been

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by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaTaking my cue from the worthy and well thumbed play-book of the Brothers Coen, I thought every now and again I might follow up all those, long, desperately serious, and highly indigestible posts about how Italy should now be considered to be "No Country For Old Men", with something in rather lighter vein. The highly acclaimed and award winning Miss Iceland Look-alike show is not the only prime time TV talent contest we are going to see over the coming weeks and months it seems. We are also apparently on the verge of watching a beefed up and much more macho version, whose pilot screenings have now been launched under the working "Man-City/Emirates Stadium" look-alike title, since news today informs us that the Libyan government is at this very moment in the process of bailing out Italy's much troubled banking ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, it's official, or at least its as near official as it's going to get at this point: the Eurozone is in its first recession. And how do I know this? Well Frankfurt-based Financial Times European economy correspondent Ralph Atkins told me it was, in this article last Tuesday. Joking aside, this line-judge ruling (we will remember the eurozone doesn't have an official referee with the authority to call recessions like the US NBER) from Ralph is significant, both due to the fact that he is about as plugged-in as it is possible to get - without, that is, electrocuting yourself on all that high voltage cable knocking about over there - to mainsteam ECB thinking over on Kaiserstrasse, and also because he has been one of the most stalwart journalistic defenders of the idea that the German economy was finally - after many ...

Make no mistake: we are in uncharted territory. Hank Paulson wants $700 billion of taxpayer’s money to buy up bad debt and ‘rescue’ the markets.Some lawmakers strongly opposed to the plan.

“The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America,” said Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, on Friday.

Justice Litle says the plan is a minefield for investors. He says there are five things you need to know about the government bailout and what it means for your portfolio.

This from Taipan Publishing:

1) The bailout is one of staggeringly massive proportions.

As I write to you in the wee hours of Monday morning, prior to my transatlantic flight, the number being bandied about for the size of the bailout is $700 billion. Keep in mind, too, that this is an opening number. It doesn’t necessarily include relief for upside-down homeowners, strapped consumers, foreign banks or many other potential “extras” that …

by Edward Hugh : BarcelonaAccording to preliminary data from national statistics office ISTAT this morning Italy's GDP fell 0.3 percent in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year and was unchanged year-on-year (ie zero percent annual growth). Final data and a detailed breakdown for the second quarter will be released on Sept. 10. In the first quarter, GDP rose 0.5 percent quarter-on-quarter and increased 0.3 percent year-on-year.European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet stated yesterday that economic growth was expected to be "particularly weak" in the third quarter after bank policy makers left borrowing costs at 4.25 percent, so it is not unreasonable to anticipate a second consecutive quarter of negative growth in Q3, and hence in all probability Italy is now in recession.Italian consumer ...