, and what was initially a trickle of selling in Italian BTPs became a full-blown liquidation panic, some Italians wondered if the Mario Draghi wasn't using a page from the Silvio Berlusconi playbook and allowing Italian bonds to tumble without ECB intervention, simply to "pressure" the domestic political process against the formation of a populist, Euroskeptic cabinet, something European Budget Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger scandalously suggested last week when he said that "the negative development of the markets will lead Italians not to vote much longer for the populists."

Indeed, as we noted last week, several politicians suggested at the end of May that the ECB was exacerbating the sharp market moves: "It would be useful to know how much debt the Bank of Italy and the ECB have bought compared to the norm? Have purchases gone down?" tweeted Carla Ruocco, a Five Star MP, at the peak of the market turmoil last week.