Euro 'threatens to asphyxiate Italy'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Filed: 22/06/2005)
The eurozone is heading towards disintegration as surging labour costs render Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain unable to compete with a resurgent Germany, according to papers published yesterday by Lombard Street Research.
Charles Dumas, head of the firm's world service, warned that Italy faced economic asphyxiation inside monetary union after allowing wages to spiral upwards - and productivity to stagnate - causing an almost irreversible loss of competiveness.
"Italy is odds on favourite to fall out of monetary union. We have a clear-cut case of disintegration of monetary union," he said, predicting that the bond markets would ultimately trigger a crisis.
The assessment comes after warnings by the European Central Bank about worrying "divergences" across the eurozone, while leaders of Italy's Lega Nord are stepping up their militant demands for a return to the lira.
Mr Dumas said it may now be too late for Italy to restore competitiveness within the eurozone, advising it ''to get out of EMU" before its industry was decimated.
Figures released by the European Commission last week showed unit labour costs (including productivity changes) have fallen 1.3pc in Germany since 1995, while rising 38.7pc in Italy.
Mr Dumas said Germany had "hammered labour resistance into the ground" through deflation, leaving German companies lean, fit and highly profitable.
By constrast, Italian industrial output and exports are now in free fall as the delayed effects of lost competitiveness start to bite. Fiat sales plunged 26pc in May from a year earlier. The economy is in its third quarter of recession, and bankruptcies loom in the textile, footwear and tile industry.
Lombard Street's Professor Tim Congdon warned that exploding budget deficits in the eurozone's southern states - now 6pc-7pc in Portugal and Greece, and heading for 5pc in Italy - were evidence of a "free rider" effect eating at the heart of monetary union


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