Italy is currently seen as the EU country most likely to collapse financially. There were severe doubts about what was going to happen when a new government was inaugurated a month or so ago. Spain is also not doing very well, but not in short-term danger. US and UK are doing much better (I don't know much about Japan).
Even worse is that several of the major Italian banks have a large exposure to Turkey including UniCredit. Italy has the worst youth unemployment in the EU[1]. Consequentially, there was a large amount of drug use in the city I lived in.
I don't feel like the US is doing better. The public debt as a percentage of the GDP isn't the only public debt number that matters. The absolute number and the public debt per capita also matter.
You must have missed the news these last few years.
As soon as the markets get a whiff of potential instability in the country that would cause a deviation on the austerity policy imposed by the EU, the credit spread on goverment bonds skyrockets.
And with some good reason, as pre-EU governments used devaluation of the Lira to boost the exports and increase GDP (of course increasing inflation) on one hand, and kept borrowing money on the other, instead of trying to address historical problems like under-development of the South, unsustainable social security, rampant tax evasion, corruption in local administrations.
Even if currency devaluation were possible these days (basically only by leaving the EU), it would have to face a much more globalized economy than last century, where many exports depend on parts manufactured abroad, which would be suddenly more expensive to produce...
Italy is not broke as long it can pay interests on its debt, but every fluctuation in the global economy affect Italy way more than UK, US or Japan.
