14/06/2012
We have noted of late that the media seems to have vacated the field where matters of our imminent economic demise are concerned. As we have remarked, there seems to be an air of unreality about everything. The Leveson sideshow shows no sign of reaching any worthwhile conclusion and seems to serve only as a distraction for the masses and displacement activity for our politicians.
Today, I saw two MP's mention something about a meeting on intellectual property. While this may be of some specialist interest it hardly seems to capture the imagination given the gravity of events in play. And then
I checked. Intellectual property is one of the things designated as a nation state competence by the Lisbon treaty, though "the EU may provide support." That figures.
It seems that our politicians are not only uninterested in matters at hand, but have no influence in them in any case. One wonders if these people occupy the same dimension, let alone the same planet.
While browsing for actual news this morning I stumbled upon
this story whereby Bank Network Investments (Italy) "discretely posted an announcement on their website that they would be freezing all of their customers accounts for 1 month freeze on citing financial difficulties. The announcement was posted and the bank gave customers 7 days to act before the Bank of Italy approved freeze went into effect."
I had a look on Google news to
try and verify this but there's very little online about it, so there is good cause
to take this with a pinch of salt since much gets lost in translation.
But this is certainly how it will start. It will be a drip, drip, drip
of undereported stories like this, rather than a big bang. Sooner or later, there will be a cascade
failure and there will be nothing left in the kitty for bailouts.
All eyes are on Spain this week and they will soon turn to the Greek elections. But Italy is now the one to watch.
UPDATE: There is something very odd about this story. There is absolutely nothing on the MSM about it. The web footprint for Banca Network Investimenti does not seem credible somehow. It appears to have no wiki page or news presence. I think this might well be a hoax. Though is it is out of the realms of possibility that the MSM dropped the ball on this?
UPDATE: Comment online... "I am from Italy and I follow closely local and international financial
and economic news and I want to set this right: this is NOT a âmajor
Italian bankâ, itâs not even a relatively well known bank, I HAVE NEVER
HEARD OF IT until now. It must be a local, VERY small bank (probably one
of those online small time operations which have flourished until
recently)."
UPDATE: It appears that the BNI has been in hot water since November 2011. When the clients' accounts were blocked (May 31), the bank was
desperately trying to find a "buyer" ...that is, the bank was for sale
because it was going down fast.
BNI obviously took advantage of a not-so-recent law that let it block
it's clients' accounts, although now, there is a big ruffus over it
having done so without forewarning said clients.
COMMENT THREAD
