When I Find Myself in Times of Trouble, Brother Ambrose Comes to Me: "Italy and Spain must pray for a miracle"

So good to see Mr. Evans-Pritchard, whose writing I once described as a "continuum that ranges from morose to suicidal" is back at it.
From The Telegraph:

Once again Europe's debt crisis has metastasized, and once again the financial authorities face systemic contagion unless they take immediate and dramatic action. 

If the ECB's Jean-Claude Trichet is right in claiming that Europe was on the brink of a 1930s financial cataclysm a year ago - and I think he is - it is hard see how the threat is any less serious right now.

Fall-out from Greece flattened Portugal and Ireland last week. It is engulfing Spain and Italy, countries with €6.3 trillion of public and private debt between them.

Yields on Italian 10-year bonds hit a post-EMU high of 5.3pc on Friday. This is not just a theoretical price: the Italian treasury has to roll over €69bn (£61bn) in August and September; it must tap the markets for €500bn before the end of 2013. The interest burden on Italy's €1.84 trillion stock of public debt is about to rise very fast.

Spanish yields punched even higher, through the danger line of 5.7pc. The bond markets of both countries are replicating the pattern seen in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland before each spiraled into insolvency. And the virus is moving up the European map. French banks alone have $472bn (£394bn) of exposure to Italy and $175bn to Spain, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

"We believe the European sovereign crisis might be entering a new phase with contagion reaching the larger economies," said Jacques Cailloux, chief Europe economist at RBS....MORE 

And a note at ZeroHedge on Italy's largest bank:
UniCredit Reopens After Halt, Plummets