Bank of Italy: Salvatore Rossi, an act of a true civil servant

An act of a true civil servant, according to which the institution comes first and only after the person. The noble one letter with which Salvatore Rossi renounced surprisingly "out of a sense of responsibility" to reapply for the Directorate General of the Bank of Italy he caught everyone off guard and messed up the games for the appointments to the heads of the Institute of Via Nazionale, relieving Governor Ignazio Visco himself from embarrassment, pressed by the assault on the diligence of the grillini and the Northern League.

Whoever his successor is, the real moral winner of the battle for the new central bank directorate is he and only he, Salvatore Rossi, because his is an act from other times and it is an act of civil servant of high moral and civil importance, which ideally links him to the best figures of the Bank of Italy, from Donato Menichella to Guido Carli and, more recently, from Paolo Baffi to Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Mario Draghi.

But his move is also a move from other times because, in an era in which men without dignity are ready to sell themselves every day not only to conquer first-floor seats but also the last of the jump seats, cases are really rare of those who renounce honors and perks for the good of the institution they have loyally served.

La resignation from the General Management of the Bank of Italy and consequently to the Presidency of IVASS it will remain in the memory of those who really have the good not only of the central bank but of Italy at heart. In addition to the substance of the gesture, the style and sober form with which Rossi performed it also counts: without regrets and with his usual smile. "My happiness, my pride - he writes at the end of his farewell letter - is to have belonged to two institutions (such as the Bank of Italy and IVASS) in which the principles of competence, seriousness, honesty, a sense of public service were held in the highest regard”.

But there are two other passages in Rossi's letter to the employees of Banca d'Italia and IVASS that deserve to be underlined. The first is the one in which the outgoing General Manager of Via Nazionale proudly states that he has worked to ensure that the Bank "maintains its nature as an institution serving the public interest, but changes when and where necessary" without withdrawing into itself.

The second is the one in which Rossi announces that he intends to devote himself in the future to "transmitting what I have learned so far to as many people as possible, of all ages and cultural conditions, through tools such as teaching, books and articles, interventions in the media". With his truly unusual gesture, Salvatore Rossi taught everyone a lesson and heaven knows how much need there is for it to continue to live and spread to other places and in other forms.