Businesses are closing like crazy because utility costs are now insane. Because of the massive increase in the cost of natural gas, restaurants are shutting down all over Italy as are other small businesses whose biggest costs are electricity and gas.
My electric bill went from ~80 Euros per month pre-sanctions to ~200. I had the money and know-how to install a solar electric system so I got costs under control. But many folks don't have the money, or the skill, to install one so they're stuck.
That increase has been devastating to individuals and small businesses here, families are being forced to choose between eating or keeping the lights on, yet we're to believe your assertion that the idiotic sanctions have had little or no cumulative, negative effect on the industrial output of entire nations in Europe? OK. Things on the ground here tell are far different story.
Here's a nice one for you and similar ones are playing out across Europe: My closest neighbors are two lovely, old folks in their mid-80s. This past winter they could not afford to run their gas heating system - they were wearing winter coats, hats and gloves inside their house so I let them hang out in my house on the coldest days to warm up. Nice, huh? I'm sure they were thinking take that Putin!while they were freezing their asses off in their house. . .
I blame the vile, virtue-signaling Eurocrats who sanctioned Russia at the cost of their own people's welfare for the ongoing and increasing impoverishment of Europeans.
Funny. My Spanish rates are down a lot. After spiking in 2022.
And business seems to be doing very well, with a horde of tourists - not in Bilbao, because we don’t get many ever.
I suspect you are cherry picking the worst of whatever over the last year. Italian economic stats are, if anything, better than Spain. And we are doing very well..
Tourist arrival for the first quarter 2023 is up by 41% vs the same period 2022. And I believe it. Here in the North we don’t see it that much, we never do. But I made the executive decision to leave Biarritz (yeah, France, but the same holidaymakers) early, because I’ve never seen such a crowd.