The ghost of new austerity measures is once again appearing on the Italian scene, precisely at the moment in which the recovery maneuvers adopted with the Salva-Italia decree begin to sting the living flesh of taxpayers, consumers and producers.
A confidential document from the European Commission, published by the Financial Times, brings back the saga of encouragements and ear-pulls that our country has already suffered since last summer, a period in which the explosion of the debt crisis generated those processes of external push towards the consolidation of the accounts culminating in the letter from the ECB , delivered to the then Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
For now, fortunately, there is nothing of the sort: the document leaked from the Brussels offices formalizes what was already known, namely that despite the structural reforms adopted by Mario Monti, a situation of financial tension persists which has so far obscured the effectiveness of the actions taken.
According to the Commission, the reforms of the caretaker government (for 100 billion euros, 7% of GDP) have allowed the country "to regain the confidence of the markets and now (Italy) is en route to the goal of a break-even budget in 2013, after having recorded a deficit equal to 3,9% of GDP in 2011”.
The praise, in the document entitled "The budgetary situation in Italy", is immediately followed by a harsh warning which contrasts worryingly with Monti's confident declarations from the Far East: "Italy's efforts to achieve the budgetary objectives could be jeopardized by bleak growth prospects and relatively high interest rates”.
The report states that "the Government should be ready to avoid any delay in implementing the measures and take further action if necessary".
A hypothesis immediately denied by Corrado Passera: "CWith austerity you don't grow – replied the Minister of Economic Development this morning -. On the contrary, we must set in motion all those operations of both a horizontal type (innovation, internationalization, credit and energy) and sector by sector to ensure that in addition to tidying up the accounts there is also growth of an economy, but especially employment”.
But if the Executive of professors has partially smoothed out the rough edges of political life by leveraging what many have defined as the "language of truth", today it seems that it is the financial markets and supranational institutions that are forcing the Government to caution.
These conditions are by now common knowledge: the slowdown of the Chinese economy, the lightening of a new, imminent financial crisis in Spain and the statements made by the Greek premier Papademos to Sole 24 Ore (which open up the hypothesis of a third package of rescue in the future), in addition to the constantly worsening continental macroeconomic scenario, are all factors that explain Brussels' doubts on the effectiveness of Monti's maneuvers: beyond the structural importance and the impact they have on the public finance regime , the spread has not yet fallen enough, the liquidity made available by the refinancing of the ECB does not flow easily into the interbank markets, companies continue to gasp in the absence of a constant flow of funding.
The Premier will certainly not like the evaluations expressed by the Commission at all. He has just returned from a long "promotional tour" in Asia, during which he successfully replicated the US experience of a month and a half ago. He has, apparently successfully, persuaded foreign investors to reverse the flow of investments by returning to betting on the Italian stock, precisely in the days in which the Bank of China warned that it had sold our country's bonds.
There is confirmation just now that the yield differential between the Btp and the Bund has risen to 332 basis points, also causing another tug of ears, the one coming from the rating giant Standard & Poor's, which recalled how the profitability of banks Italian companies also collapsed in the light of the publication of the financial statements of some institutes, fresh from record write-downs of goodwill which will turn into a very prudential dividend policy.
Since the Government has repeatedly remarked that the recovery measures have been calibrated on very pessimistic estimates of cycle contraction, to ensure a balanced budget, the question that everyone will be asking is, of course: the "tears and blood" measures approved so far Will they really be the last?
One thing is certain: all the countries of the European periphery have, so far, worked on their welfare systems to adopt the measures "suggested" by the Merkel-Sarkozy duo. If the taxpayers' sacrifices are not sufficient, the judgment of public opinion will decree the definitive culpability of an increasingly inadequate Community development policy.
