Its my Friday lay day blog and I am limping into the weekend to rest up some more. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post (July 31, 2015) – Why Italy is the most likely country to leave the euro. This accords with the view I outlined in my book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – that a large economy such as Italy should demonstrate leadership in the Eurozone and pave the way for the weaker nations to restore their own growth. We would not have witnessed the torturous brutality that was dealt out to Greece recently if the Troika were dealing with Italy. The question is whether Italy is likely to provide that leadership. On July 22, 2015, Eurostat released the latest government debt data for the Eurozone which showed that – Government debt rose to 92.9% of GDP in euro area – which, of course is well above the 60 per cent threshold allowed for by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). In the last 12 months “fourteen Member States registered an increase in their debt to GDP ratio at the end of the first quarter of 2015, twelve a decrease and in Estonia there was no change.” In the last quarter, fifteen states increased their debt ratios. Greece shows up as having the highest debt ratio but the largest reduction over the last year. But the interesting thing about the data is that Italy has the second-large public debt ratio (at 135.1 per cent) and is among the nations with the largest increases. On the numbers, Italy is being left behind, stuck in recession with high unemployment and a rising public debt ratio which will surely bring it into conflict with the Excessive Deficit Mechanism before too long.