Business | General

Italians leave finance to fate

People spend £5b a year seeking advice from fortune-tellers and tarot card readers

  • By Nick Squires, The Telegraph Group Ltd, London 2010
  • Published: 00:00 February 9, 2010
  • Gulf News

Rom:  Italy's worst recession since the Second World War has prompted Italians to spend a staggering £5 billion (Dh28.5 billion) a year seeking financial advice, not from banks and brokers but fortune tellers and astrologers.

Amid rising unemployment and general gloom over the state of the economy, tarot card readers and pavement fortune tellers are doing a roaring trade. About 30,000 Italians are paying between 20 and 600 euros a day looking for advice to help them out of their financial woes, according to a report by the European Consumers Association.

"Italians are very susceptible to trying their luck on anything esoteric and they're extremely superstitious," said Carlo Climati, who wrote a book on superstitious beliefs.

 

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