Italy is running out of economic time. Seven years into an ageing global expansion, the country is still stuck in debt-deflation and still grappling with a banking crisis that it cannot combat within the paralyzing constraints of monetary union. "We have lost nine percentage points of GDP since the peak of the crisis, and a quarter of our industrial production," says Ignacio Visco, the rueful governor of the Banca d'Italia. Each year Rome hopefully pencils in a fall in the ratio of public debt to GDP, and each year the ratio rises. The reason is always the same. Deflationary conditions prevent nominal GDP rising ... (full story)