Watching Italy is becoming very interesting, for it would appear that there are certain "deep interests" in that country that didn't get the memo on the glories and benefits of the euro according to this article passed along by A.F.:

https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/06/unnecessary-euro-italian-mafia-shows-another-world-is-possible-continues-using-lira-as-a-parallel-currency/

Ponder this carefully:

An Italian senior police official has revealed that criminal organizations in the country are still using the currency of the pre-Euro period for illicit transactions, the Bloomberg news agency reported. According to the agency, the lira exchange rate is not known for euros or if it exists, however the police say they still find bills linked to the mafia. The lira ceased to be a legal tender at the end of February 2002 due to the introduction of the euro, the single European currency. “We have still found large amounts of lire,” said Giuseppe Arbore, a finance guard police officer investigating financial crimes, during a parliamentary hearing on Thursday. “Italian lire still represents part of the illicit transactions.” “When a ballot is accepted by an organization internally, even if it is outlawed as a legal value, it can settle transactions. We are obviously talking about illegal organizations,” Arbore said. While the use of a parallel Lira shows that another world is possible, in no way is this meant to condone the whole range of illicit activities engaged in by the mafia. ... This is not the first time that the Mafia is related to the old Italian currency. In 2012, the report of the Central Bank’s Financial Information Unit revealed that it worked with the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate on “suspicious transaction reports” related to the lira-euro exchange rate.

The implications here are stunning, for if one puts all this together and "reads between the lines", we get this:

1) The Italian mafia has continued to transact in Italian lira since the introduction of the euro. This means a significant segment of the Italian deep state has maintained suspicions about the viability and therefore the value of the euro and the EU-eurozone since its inception;

2) This means, as the article rightly points out, that there has to be, at some point, a transaction mechanism between the lira and the euro, in short, an exchange rate. What is implied by this is that there is an infrastructure for currency conversion between the two, and that implies:

3) a parallel system of finance and ultimately and at some point the participation of banks in the scheme.

Additionally:

4) The assumption of the article is that the continued use of the lira is tied to some unknown exchange mechanism with the euro, but what if some other currency was being covertly converted for these lira? If that be the case, then it means that the Italian mafia has some sort of covert arrangement with whatever country's currency (or, with whatever countries' currencies) might be involved in such a scheme.

I can think of a few countries to the east of Italy that might participate in such a scheme, although, it would be extraordinarily risky for them to do so, for if that participation were ever disclosed, that country's trustworthiness would take a further hit.

The bottom line here is that this article raises immense implications and questions, for it's an admission that there is a parallel financial system in Italy, with the Mafia at one end of it. The real question is, who is on the other end of it?

See you on the flip side...