Certain relationships between local economic groups, public banks and politics ultimately proved disastrous for the banks and deleterious for civic mores; in more than one case, local development was hindered rather than helped. With great, conscious effort we worked our way free of this logic twenty years ago; other countries now look to the Italian experience. No one wants to turn back.
4  BIS Review 148/2010  Growth and employment While the Italian banking system may have withstood the global financial crisis of 2007–08 better than others, the recession that it provoked was especially severe in our country, driving annual output in 2009 down to the level of nine years earlier.