When Europe's been peppered with uncertainty the whole year. And Monti was always a technocratic government that came in with a specific mandate. Then of course, Italy's a democracy, said you will step aside and there's an election. Could come back as a politician. Maybe not. I think the fear is who could replace him. But I think he's done an excellent job and he's steadied the ship. But he did say he would step aside after a year, done certain measures.

Now here's the question. Is it the issue of Monti stepping aside when he was sort of the steady hand on Italy's unsteady finances, if you like? Or is it respective Berlusconi coming back that really has people worried? Because the bond markets, we see the yield rising on the 10-year Italian bonds as it seems that stock markets plummet in Milan.

Yes, but it's a one-day wonder that you saw the euro come off this morning, bounced right back. These markets are incredibly volatile and there's not much to do. So people are obviously to sell the story. Yes, of course, there's a few of them may replace him. Technocratic government did what the markets liked, gave us certainty but as I said, this is a democracy and democracies create uncertainty. And so who'll replace him? We don't know. But I think this big story moves on to Spain, the ESM and whether the ECB's going to start printing or not.

OK. Now that's an interesting one. 2013 looming as I was saying before. Does that mean we're going to have a full-on Spanish bailout in the early months of next year?

I think could come even late this year. I think if it wasn't for the fiscal cliff and the market changing its focus over tension onto the US, we would have pressurized already Spain into coming to the ESM, which as you know, ESM stands for Extra Spanish Money. So it shouldn't be a surprise when they confirm.

Yes, absolutely.

Might even have gotten lost in the alphabet soup already that EU’s created to try and solve the eurozone crisis. Well, what about credit rating cuts for some of these countries, notably just going back to the issue of Italy and the face of so much uncertainty? This is going to make it very difficult for these countries to try to cut their enormous amount of debt of debt-to-GDP, cut their budgets. And if they do get downgraded, will their debt becomes more expensive.

Well, not in the case we've seen of France. They got downgraded with, again, a one-day wonder. They sold off and French yields are straight back down again. The problem is if your debt-to-GDP starts rising but you think austerity's the answer, and you do austerity but growth starts to plummet, then you need more austerity and then growth goes down. And that's the Greek situation we’ve got ourselves in for. So I'd say just ignore the rating agencies and try to do the right thing. Get growth going and don't overdo the austerity.