Italy is increasingly dependent on the ECB to hold down bond yields as foreign investors dump Italian bonds like mad.

Eurointelligence bills this as "Further Evidence of Capital Flight in Italy".

In a column earlier this week, Federico Fubini notes that, according to the Bank of International Settlements, in 2016 international banks reduced their exposure to Italy by 15%, or over $100bn, half of it in the last quarter of the year. The counterpart to this exposure reduction is the increase in the negative Target2 balance of Italy, which the ECB has already attributed to foreign investors selling into its asset purchase programs, and reinvesting the proceeds away from Italy. As a result of all this, Italy's financial stability is increasingly dependent on the ECB."