Slow and hesitant at first, the recovery is gradually strengthening, and for two years now the trend has been clearly positive. Of course, the road ahead is still long and fraught with uncertainty. Notwithstanding its recent growth, Italy’s GDP remains seven percentage points below the level of early 2008.
Around the time the deal was struck, the yield spreads of the Imperial Japanese government debt over the British Consol, a measure of risk premium against the benchmark of the era, peaked around 300 basis points. It tightened to around 150 basis points one and a half year later.