Italian families are the hardest hit in the entire euro area by the quantitative easing launched by the European Central Bank in order to revive the eurozone economy and ward off the specter of deflation.
In terms of loss of interest income, the ECB's ultra-accommodative and zero-interest policy for some months now seems to have also had repercussions on the real economy and on households in particular.
This is what we read in a study, contained in the Economic Bulletin of the ECB, released today. According to the Frankfurt experts, since the end of 2008 household net interest income has “remained practically stable in Germany and France, but not in Spain and Italy”.
In our country, on the other hand, there was a drop in interest income "more than double the drop in interest payments, with a negative impact on the overall balance sheet". The cause of this trend, according to the report, is due to the peculiarities of the portfolios held by Italian families, characterized by "a relatively large volume of interest-bearing assets". At the same time, however, Italian families are also "less in debt" than those of other countries.
