Hello Alexa, thank you looking at my article and commenting. Switzerland is incredibly beautiful and the environment is carefully nurtured. There are also many very old towns and the centres are well preserved. Some of the buildings have the years when they were built on them, many in the 1300s. If you ever come this way I will show you around my home town, Zürich. Home to bankers - the Gnomes of Zürich - and the canton (state) that it is the capital of is home to those companies in my article and many others. James

Good article. I had one published on this subject in 2015 together with an idea to fix it seekingalpha.com/.../3678416-student-loan-property-bonds-will-restore-growth-prosperity The economy got better since but that problem got worse. Whether my idea was workable or not I do not know but something needed to be done and nothing has been.

Interesting article. Trump won’t believe he caused it and the itchy fingered, trigger happy Fed will raise interest rates to "cure” it.

Alexis, Italy is in a currency union - it cannot change the value of the euro. They could and did often when they had their own currency, the lire. James

That is the view of the elitists that have made sacrifices of humans on the sacred alter of their ill-considered euro. They call it an internal devaluation and a necessary adjustment. I have no sympathy for the use of devaluing a currency to make products competitive. I managed German companies when we had the ever appreciating DM and had to compete against that Italian nuisance. However that kept whole communities alive and tens of thousands employed. The Italian industry confederation estimated that some 32,000 companies went out of business as a result of the euro. There are humanity and ethical matters being completely overridden by this EU blindness. The euro was the direct cause of this foul consequence.

Making an economy competitive takes years, it cannot be done overnight and it cannot be done by undemocratic bureaucrats in Brussels. It has to be done by the people - if they want it to be done. Likewise decisions on which currency they wish to have.

My other point is that Italy will likely break-up anyway exacerbated by these strains.

Maybe but those tensions within that I mentioned are very real. Many companies in Sud Tyrol have moved their operations over the border into Austria to get away from the corrupt, stifling Italian bureaucracy. Their employees simply commute to and fro to work daily. The League that is part of the coalition has long wanted to separate from Italy. Many parts of the north, that is their base, still have very successful companies and that and the culture is different from the south.

The euro is the wrong currency for Italy and has been from the beginning. Many thousand SMEs that relied on the ever depreciating lire went out of business. One can argue endlessly about the wrongs of that but it employed a lot of people whose lives have since been destroyed. Many have left the country to seek work and new lives elsewhere. They are among the best and will not return. Italy cannot recover. Tensions within also suggest it will break-up. Sud Tyrol wants to become part of Austria and other parts of the north want independence from Rome. The EU cannot fix this and is in danger of breaking up too unless it faces up to the reality that the euro is unfixable without a banking union among other things.

Thank you for the warning. I do not share your views about SA but am wary of contributors who pump stocks then dump them after readers have bought in.

Good article. I had my own thoughts published in this one seekingalpha.com/.../4168435-chinas-democracy-vs-u-s-tweetocracy

"And smart investors who put capital to work here stand to make LITERAL fortunes”

Where is here?