France and Africa: a matter of money

The recent hush-hush between Italy and France about immigration from Africa stirred many discussions in the ‘net, with a whole lot of rage and indignation for the harsh words used by the French President and other people related to the French authorities against Italy.

When it comes to Africa and to the complex history between African countries and the former European powers the name of France stands out for a decision made in 1945, right after the Bretton Woods Agreements. They created two brand new currencies, named CFA Franc and CFP Franc, for their colonies with a fixed exchange with the French Franc. The former was created for the African colonies, the latter for the overseas territories (French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna). To add a layer of bureaucratic redundancy, CFA Franc was split in West African Franc and Central African Franc.

Continue reading

Italian Standoff 2018 – get ready for a new round

La situación de Italia by Tovar

Welcome back to Italy, the country where the distance between tragedy and farce is shorter every day. As for the title of this post, the 2018 political standoff goes on with more and more shades of political degradation with no end in sight.

Yesterday our president Sergio Mattarella refused, once for all, to greenlight the start of a new government. In our constitutional laws, he was authorized to do that, but it is the first time ever that the motivation of such denial was tied to the possible destabilization of the Euro currency and to the general connection between our national economic system and the EU financial system. That’s thin ice at best.

Continue reading

Open letter to Mr.Stiglitz

stiglitz

Dear Sir,
I’m an Italian citizen with some understanding about what’s going on in my country. This post is an open letter to you and to the people at Business Insider. I have just read this article (LINK), where my country is poised as the next big threat to Eurozone and to the sheer existence of the Euro currency.

Continue reading