Freedom to Pollute

Last week I argued that motorists are unusually privileged by being:

"...free to pollute the environment and thereby kill blamelessly."

I attempted to put a cost on deaths related to vehicle pollution, and came to the figure of £14.5bn per annum. For simplicity I made some hasty approximations, figures from 2001 and ignored the costs of healthcare.

Since then the Environmental Audit Committee has published a report stating that poor health related to pollution costs £8.5bn-£20bn per year.

Italy

Italy is a strange case. As the BBC reports it has low levels of national debt (though high government debt) and tends to balance its budget sheet before interest payments are taken into account.

These interest payments are the problem. As I have been writing this post the following has happened to yields on Italian 10 year bonds:

9th November 2011, 14:52:36 GMT

9th November 2011, 14:55:42 GMT

9th November 2011, 14:57:32 GMT

9th November 2011, 15:05:52 GMT

7% is considered dangerous.

At least Berlusconi is going, The Economist said he should go as far back as 2001. To be frank his stranglehold over Italy's media and government strikes as rather dictatorial. Silver-linings eh?

ed. Added link to 7% video. 

ed. N.B. The small number below the % change is the important value, however if this keeps getting hiked at 8% day-on-day (or even the 10% it hit at one point) things will worsen very quickly. The value hit a high of 7.48 at around 7:00ET (12:00 GMT) giving an absolute change of 0.69 on the opening price, or ~10.2% increase.