The President of the Republic, in his address to Parliament on 17 March, called European integration “an extraordinary historical invention in which Italy has successfully played a leading role since the 1950s.” One hundred and fifty years ago we Italians undertook an equally important construction: our country’s monetary unification, which would then consolidate the political unification just attained.
Second, with loan losses still high and difficult to predict in the current environment, and with further uncertainty attending how regulatory capital standards may change, banks are being especially conservative in taking on more risk. Third, many securitization markets remain impaired, reducing an important source of funding for bank loans.