³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Ìý

'Forget Greece. What's up with Italy?' tweets TIME.

Not as much as you might think blogs Nick Ottens - because

"Italy come into financial problems, it would be too big for Europe to bail out but there is no reason to assume that it could face the possibility of a default yet. Italy is in bad shape but its problems are far cry from the predicament of Greece or Ireland"

Italy's finance minister has announced that the country will be following EU leaders' concerns that the - but is it too late?

that whilst economists point out Italy is nothing ike Greece or Spain -he's not so sure.

'This lacklustre growth is directly a result of Italy's euro membership. The Italian economy is about a third less competitive than Germany's and the only way to regain that competitiveness, given that it can't devalue its currency, is for German inflation to run hotter than Italy's. But with the ECB and Germany both being inflation phobic, this almost certainly means a long and painful bout of Italian deflation and austerity.'

It's a bleak future for Italy if current predictions prove true. So on today's WHYS we'll speaks to Italians and experts about the reality of the state of Italy.