Chances of Italy leaving EU are close to zero: Seth Freeman, GlassRatner

Seth Freeman, Senior Managing Director, GlassRatner, tells ET Now that the Italy crisis is a short-term problem but the global economy being inter-connected, one cannot ignore it.

Edited excerpts:

The Italian economy is 10 times larger than that of Greece. If Greece could shake the core foundation of European Union a few years ago, do you think the problem in Italy can keep everyone guessing?

Yes, it could, but the chance of Italy leaving EU is probably close to zero.


Do you agree that it may have been a scare for a few hours and caused the Dow to plummet for one session but it would not go beyond that because an exit is not in the realms of a possibility as they cannot survive on their own?

The Italian economy itself has some structural problems. There is a lot of immigration from the Middle East and some of the nationalistic politics comes from that. But it is also interesting that the situation is being tempered somewhat by the fact that oil prices have subsided slightly. This is going to provide a nice buffer. But I agree with the assessment that we cannot forget how interconnected global economies are and this is a short-term problem in Italy. We will have to see how that can impact our markets in the US and flows to India.