Italy is one small shock away from a sovereign default of global scale. The International Monetary Fund is not allowed to state this openly but that is the message of its latest Fiscal Monitor.

The public debt ratio is to ratchet up from 132.1pc of GDP in 2018, to 134.4pc in 2020, and 138.5pc in 2024. The final figure is academic. Bond vigilantes will take matters into their hands long before then.

The budget deficit will blow through 3pc next year, reach 3.7pc by 2022, and approach 4pc by mid-decade in chronic violation of the Maastricht treaty. This all assumes that there is no global recession and that nothing goes wrong.

America is no pretty sight either. Donald Trump’s wasted fiscal stimulus pushes the US debt ratio from 105.8pc to 110pc over the next four years. But the US is a sovereign superpower with its own central bank. It borrows in its own currency. Italy borrows in “D-Marks” that it cannot print.

Lorenzo Codogno, ex-chief economist at the Italian treasury and now at LC Macro Advisors, says Italy may already be beyond the point of no return. We now await the consequences of the summit of Dec 14 when EU leaders set in motion the final denouement, with scarcely a word of comment from the press.