Mediobanca hints at Italian euro exit unless Germany shifts on EMU policy

``Italy remains stuck in depression. We now know that the spectacular spike in consumer confidence in June was a ruse, a white lie to talk up prospects and hold back the debt-deflation tide... Professor Giuseppe Ragusa from Rome's Luiss Guido Carli University said the government is clutching at straws, hoping that a world recovery will somehow lift Italy out of the slump. "They are not doing anything. The policy is completely passive but it is not going to work because we are in a debt trap, and unlike Spain we have continued to lose labour competitiveness against Germany over the past three or four years."''