Italian mysteries or how to survive with the fourth biggest sovereign debt in the world

The paper will try to answer were the huge Italian debt comes from, to what extent it could have been avoided, and to what extent vice versa it has been the result of the Italian consensual social and political decision process of the last 30-40 years.

The paper will use the rhetoric mechanism of perceptions/misperceptions to analyze the long and the medium term Italian economic development. This mechanism, although imperfect and mostly misleading, is in any case responsible for the evaluation and reactions of the financial markets to the Italian economic situation, and for their decisions about purchases or sales of the Italian bonds, and the evaluation of the Italian banking system.