MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The importance, for Italian bankers, of not knowing English

Minister Giulio Tremonti

Italian banks were saved from the US subprime mortgage originated crisis that has become global because they barely speak or understand English confessed the Italian Minister of Economy Giulio Tremonti during an interview published this week in the French newspaper Les Echos and picked up by global news agencies

"Our banks have not suffered much from the sub-prime crisis. Very few of them manage but a few words in English! Therefore their exposure to the toxic assets had a very limited consequence. Today our bankers and banking system are not even asking for assistance, much less rescue packages", said Tremonti in direct reference to the crisis that blew up during the 2007 northern hemisphere summer. As to the current situation and the instruments which have been applied by the different countries to address the issue, Tremonti said that the G-8 group (of highly industrialized nations made up of the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia) "is no longer representative of the world we live in". Tremonti extended his comments to the G20 group (which included among others, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, etc) saying that it's not perfect "because it does not include among its members countries such as Egypt or Spain. How can you have Spain and Egypt outside of this group of countries? It's hard to sustain that Saudi Arabia represents the whole Arab world". The Economy minister underlined that Italy is willing and open "to accept any solution which broadens, expands G-8". Italy this month was handed the rotating chair of the G8 for the whole of 2009. According to Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini Italy is planning meetings on agriculture and development in advance and on the sidelines of this year's G8 summit which is scheduled to be held next June in the Sardinian island of La Maddalena. Meetings on welfare, the environment and the economy will be taking place in March and next June, before the summit, G8 Foreign Affairs ministers will invite their counterparts from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey. "If we are talking about security and the fight against terrorism we need to involve the largest possible number of political actors, taking into account the hot spots of the world", said Frattini.