
Copio il titolo del mio articolo direttamente dal Financial Times:
Italy loves currency swaps tooEcco alcuni estratti dell'articolo in inglese:
...Turns out, sovereigns are not the only public bodies with a love of currency swaps. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Italian municipalities are increasingly under domestic pressure over their prevalent use of derivatives in the last few years.
According to the chairman of the state audit court, Tullio Lazzaro — as quoted by Bloomberg:
“Many local authorities used such instruments to get immediate liquidity for current expenditure,” Tullio Lazzaro, chairman of the Court of Accounts, said in a speech in Rome today. “This will leave them and the future generations with forms of increasingly onerous debt.”
The Bloomberg report stated more than 519 Italian municipalities now face an estimated €990m in losses from such derivative contracts, according to to data from the Bank of Italy.
And it’s not something the Italian authorities are taking lightly. As Bloomberg continued:
Police are investigating losses on derivatives linked to 870 million euros of bonds sold by the Apulia regional government in 2003 and 2004, the prosecutor’s office in Bari said on Feb. 3.............