Dat is in ieder geval het nieuwste gespreksonderwerp in de financiële wandelgangen deze morgen. Want nu dat Spanje een ‘lening’ heeft ontvangen voor zijn noodlijdende banken, zonder veel voorwaarden en pottenkijkers, komen ook andere landen in het vizier van de markt. De logica wijst meteen in de richting van Italië met zijn gigantische schuldenberg. We pikken er wat ochtendcommentaren uit:

“The scrutiny of Italy is high and certainly will not dissipate after the deal with Spain,” Nicola Marinelli, who oversees $153 million at Glendevon King Asset Management in London, said in an interview. “This bailout does not mean that Italy will be under attack, but it means that investors will pay attention to every bit of information before deciding to buy or to sell Italian bonds.” “The problem for Italy is that where Spain goes, there’s always the perception that Italy could follow,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director at Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London said in an interview. ”There is insufficient differentiation within the financial markets. It is clear as the light of day and has been that Spain’s fundamentals are a lot direr than Italy’s. That hasn’t stopped Italy suffering from Spanish contagion.” “If Italy has a problem with accessing the markets because investors lose confidence in the Italian ability to do the right thing, the ECB will be drawn into the fire,” said Thomas Mayer, an economic adviser to Deutsche Bank AG, in a telephone interview. “That could pose a potentially lethal threat to European monetary union.” “The ECB will probably have to restart buying bonds but there will be a lot of sellers into that of people who are worried that Spain is the next Greece and Italy the next Spain,” said Lex Van Dam, who manages $500 million at Hampstead Capital LLC in London. “Mr. Monti seems to be infinitely more concerned about what’s going on abroad than what’s going on in parliament,” Spiro said. “Understandably so, because Italy has not been a master of its own fate for a long time. He’s perfectly aware that in order to fix Italy, they have to fix the euro zone.”