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2008

The beginning of the recession coincided in Italy with the arrival to power, for the third time, of Silvio Berlusconi. It was 2008. That year, the Italian economy contracted by 1% as a result of the drop in exports and consumption, while the public debt increased. But the risk premium was still a distant concept in popular language. Until 2010 and the differential between the interest of the Italian 10-year bond and the German bund went from 75 to 185 points.

The executive, Berlusconi, said: "The Italians are fine, the restaurants are full and the hotels are complete." The optimism of Silvio Berlusconi during the G20 meeting in November 2011 was numbered. A few weeks later, the then Italian prime minister had to resign, dragged by his sexual scandals and, above all, by the crisis

The financial markets began to look with suspicion on the transalpine country in the summer of 2011. The government of Silvio Berlusconi, worn out by the innumerable scandals surrounding the businessman, approved an adjustment plan of up to 79,000 million euros. For the European Central Bank (ECB) it was not enough and so he told Rome in a controversial letter where he requested structural reforms "urgent" to contain the deficit and public debt.

By then, the Italian risk premium exceeded the Spanish premium for the first time and stood at 400 points. Italy reacts: it approves more cuts and proposes to introduce the budgetary balance in the Constitution. Too late. A month later, Berlusconi announces his resignation as chief executive and the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, appoints a new technical government headed by the former European Commissioner, Mario Monti. Brussels tries to avoid at all costs the fall of Rome because the rescue of the third economy of the euro zone would be practically unaffordable.

Monti and his team of technocrats were in charge of the Italian government only 13 months. Enough to recover the confidence of international investors and get extra time to undertake the reforms, but at the cost of losing the confidence of the Italians. Monti approved an ambitious adjustment plan worth 30,000 million euros, which he called Salva Italia, so that no one would forget the seriousness of the situation that the country was going through. cut in Health, Education and Public Administration; It gave the green light to a controversial labor reform and introduced changes in the pension system, which raised the retirement age to 66 years. The key word was "sacrifice" and the tears of the Minister of Labor, Elsa Fornero, during the announcement, were only a foretaste of what would come next. In 2013, unemployment reached three million, double that at the beginning of the crisis.

After the brief passage of Enrico Letta (PD) in front of the Executive, his party mate, Matteo Renzi, arrives in Rome in 2014 with one objective: to face the austerity policy imposed by the European institutions, Paris and Berlin. But the crisis of the financial entities explodes to him as soon as arriving. Renzi succeeds in passing a new labor reform with the vote against part of his party and millions of Italians in the streets, but prioritizes political reforms over economic ones. In December 2016, he resigned after failing to reform the Constitution. Meanwhile, public debt does not stop increasing and exceeds two trillion euros, 130% of GDP.

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