Renzi and Five Star leaders both say public money should save banks, not investors
I think I woke up in crazy-land.
The EU made rules, which seem entirely sensible (for once), that say governments can't bailout banks unless bond and shareholders take some of the pain.
In spike of that, Italian Prime Minister Renzi has gone to Brussels to lobby for a waiver of that rule so he can dump taxpayer money into Monte Paschi and some other zombie banks while sparing bondholders.
That's bad enough but it goes into bizzaro-world with the supposedly populist Five Star Movement, whose leader-in-waiting (30-year old Luigi di Maio) is publically going to bat for the same idea.
He said private investors in the banks should be spared and taxpayer money should be used.
He said used this remarkable bit of doublespeak: "citizens would be paying for mistakes they did not make". In this case "citizens" refers to investors, who indeed made the mistake of investing in terribly-run banks.
di Maio also said institutions, such as fund managers, should be spared, arguing that to do otherwise would cause "even greater problem in terms of foreign investment, and also Italian investments which would move abroad".
