MooPig's Site Review :: "Italy votes to knuckle down"

In the middle of July, Italy passed austerity measures legislation. Did it help?
Retrieved by Pat Darnell | July 17-August 20 2011 | Bryan TX

Italy votes to knuckle down: "The lower house voted 316 to 284 for the plan, in what politicians called the fastest approval of a budget bill in modern Italian history." (Rachel Donadio. July 17, 2011)

The bill was originally supposed to be debated later in the summer.

Italy's high debt and low growth have placed the country in an uncomfortable international spotlight. The rates the country had to pay to borrow rose this week to the highest levels in three years.
The Italian austerity package aims to eliminate the country's budget deficit by 2014. The deficit is now 4.6 per cent of gross domestic product, below the average for the euro zone.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/italy-votes-to-knuckle-down-20110716-1hj0n.html#ixzz1VZShyjvx

[...]
“There are the ones that can probably make it through, even though it will be very unpleasant, as long as there isn’t a panic, and those would be Spain and Italy,” he said today in an interview in Stockholm. “There are the ones that are probably fundamentally insolvent where there’s going to have to be a debt write down and those would be Greece, Portugal, Ireland.”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-18/italy-spain-can-probably-survive-crisis-krugman-says.html (By Johan Carlstrom, 18 August 2011)

[...]
MARKETS
European equities suffered their biggest daily fall in two
and a half years on Thursday, as a slew of data cast further
doubt on the strength of the recovery in the world's biggest
economy. [ID:nL5E7JI28W]

Sharp losses in banking and industrial stocks dragged the
Milan blue-chip index sharply lower due to mounting worries
about a global recession. [ID:nWEA1247]

* FIAT INDUSTRIAL (FI.MI)
Goldman Sachs cuts rating to "neutral" from "buy"
[Source LINK] (MILAN, Aug 19 [Reuters])