Copyrighted Image? DMCA | Times are now so tough that Valerio Novelli, a ticket inspector on Rome's buses, is planning to sell his old gold teeth. In a country suffering from economic crisis, buying gold off desperate people has become one of the few boom industries. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was brought down by an escalating debt crisis in November, liked to claim that with restaurants still full and Italians buying as many electronic gadgets as ever, there was little concrete evidence of economic downturn in Italy. But the proliferation of pawn shops, with an estimated annual turnover of 7 billion euros, is a very visible sign that for millions of Italians life has changed for the worse. |
Read the rest of the story HERE:
At www.cnbc.com
At www.cnbc.com
