Barring the happy surprises of postponement, the work of the Commission of Inquiry into the banking system should begin by the end of this September, which already promises to be a missed opportunity to undertake, in the necessarily not short time required, an in-depth examination of the functioning of the banking sector and of the root causes, both regulatory and behavioral, which over time have led to the most recent banking disasters. Indeed, it seems that due to the short times envisaged for the work of the Commission, the practices that have always marked the succession of work by the most prestigious commissions of inquiry or simple investigations of the past will be forcibly disregarded.
It is evident that such practices were not known or were not adequately considered by the two presidents of the Chamber and Senate during the meetings of the group leaders who set the timetable for parliamentary work. Instead, it has been forgotten that in the field of legislation for the financial and credit markets, in the past decades the best Commissions have produced valuable cognitive material for a more in-depth knowledge of the phenomena investigated and for the important repercussions on the new rules to be adopted by Parliament ; but this required a lot of time and dozens of meetings.
It is certain that the most informed parliamentarians still remember today, just to mention the most famous and productive commissions of the so-called first Republic, the commission of inquiry into economic freedom in Italy which carried out its work in the years 1963-64 and which laid the foundations to review the competitive context in force in Italy; the commission on the Sindona case (1980-1982) which laid the foundations for new legislation for the financial and securities markets in particular; the commission on operations of Consob (years 1983-1984) which conditioned the reform of investment services performed by multifunctional operators, and so on.
Consultation of the numerous volumes produced confirms that it was common practice to operate over a period of time of no less than two years. Time necessary for the so-called interrogations and the so-called hearings (about twenty on average) and the representatives of the associations (Abi in the lead) and the supervisory authorities; for example Guido Carli in the Sindona case, Franco Piga, Paolo Baffi and Guido Rossi in the case of the investigation into Consob operations.
It is therefore surprising how a new commission of inquiry has been set up whose life can already be measured in a few weeks of work, given the commitments of almost all the parliamentarians to be present in the courtroom, on pain of not approving the laws. But today, the wind of the elections is once again blowing strongly in the sails of the corsair ships of the transversal populist party who consider too tempting an opportunity not to miss that of creating a limelight through the Commission of Inquiry on the Banks. As I wrote in my blog on July 15, 2017 on FIRSTonline, I feared, given the tone of the parliamentary debate at the time, that the newly established Banking Commission of Inquiry would turn into a "people's court" with a single defendant: the governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco: suspected, albeit in the absence of the evidence that should be collected by the Commission of Inquiry in the course of all its work, to formulate its final judgment in the established proof of not having adequately supervised the misdeeds of the banks. It should be added that, according to the background of the newspapers, Ignazio Visco is unwelcome and notoriously disliked by Matteo Renzi who would like to have one of his associates and yes man at the helm of the Bank of Italy.
In this bitter political context, given the intentions of President Mattarella and Prime Minister Gentiloni to confirm Visco at the helm of the Bank of Italy, there are those who trust in his spontaneous so-called "step back": after the turmoil of his hearing which is announced at beginning of the work and not at the end. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the honorable Ettore Rosato, head of the PD group in the Chamber of Deputies, in his interview with Corriere della sera last week, more or less consciously indicated the way for the "step backwards": the first of all, the commission will have to “listen to the Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco” (…) Visco must also lend a hand on how to frame the works”. A singular request is to ask the suspected offender for help in organizing the trial; but the wind of the elections is filling the sails more and more.
