As in the case of Portugal, what wasn't an issue in 2000 suddenly became one in 2010 when the markets noticed three things: Italy does indeed have the third-biggest bond market in the world; its growth rate is terrible, so its ability to pay back or even roll over its debt if interest rates go up is extremely constrained; and, its demographics are even worse than Portugal's. While Italy is ranked 158th out of 230 countries in population growth, a marginal improvement over Portugal, it is ranked 207th in births. The median age of the population is 43.5, and 20 percent of the country is already over sixty-five years old. Given that one of the few truly linear events in life is death (there are no 200-year-old people out there), over one-third of Italy's population will be over sixty-five by 2035.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 197