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 ...

Move by Deutsche Bank follows similar halting of activities by ProShares and Rydex in the U.S.

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Deutsche Bank's ETF designed to short bank stocks has stopped taking short positions on both the London Stock Exchange and Borsa Italia, and is planning to implement a similar policy with the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Furthermore, the bank short ETF has stopped accepting new investments, and redemptions will be met with a bid price by the fund's provider, Deutsche Bank. While the X-Trackers family of ETFs is available on five European exchanges in all, the bank short ETF is only available on the London, Italian and Frankfurt exchanges.

The DJ STOXX 600 Banks Short X-Trackers ETF (LSE: XS7S) has stopped shorting due to the ban on short selling implemented by the Financial Services Authority, which acted

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