Interesting Market Dynamics for Italian Gov't Bonds

The Economist reports on the speculative characteristics of Italian Government bonds: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/09/08/why-italys-government-bonds-are-so-unstable

Summary: As a result of its fiscal situation, Italy's government has tapped the Euro-zone bond market so much that Italy has become the largest market for sovereign Euro bonds. These Italian government bonds have significant, unique risks as well as potentially valuable options.

On the risk side, the somewhat Eurosceptic and weakly cohesive Italian coalition government may decide to pass a budget that disregards the Euro-zone fiscal rules and thus lose the support of the European Central Bank and bonds markets. (Interesting note: The ECB's support of the Italian government bond market is already coming to an end as the ECB's program of gargantuan monthly bond purchases known as quantitative easing is ending)

On the valuable option side, the ECB may decide that Italian default presents too much of a threat to the single currency and thus start buying bonds again (leading to a price increase).