If the Cernobbio event at the end of summer promoted, like every year, by the Ambrosetti studio, is the barometer of the state of health of the Italian and world economy and of the moods of the elite, this year's result could be summarized in two words: bewilderment and fear.
Loss in the face of a global crisis that not even economists know if it will end in 7 or 70 years and fear for the awareness of dancing on the Titanic without a helmsman who can vigorously straighten the course. But also fear for the feeling that time is up and the day of reckoning is near. These feelings of anguish are very present in the Italian ruling class and the Cernobbio workshop has plastically brought them to light. Concerns do not depend only on the general economic slowdown but on the awareness that the explosion of public debt throughout the West has changed the traditional paradigms of the economy and that no one has yet found the solution to an apparently impossible theorem: how to reduce debt in the absence of strong growth or, if you prefer, how to resume growth in the presence of very high debt. The inability to respond to this dilemma has indeed aggravated the situation by exposing, in all its seriousness, the leadership crisis that torments America and Europe, not to mention Italy.
Since 9 August the world has entered its fifth year of crisis but, if in 2007 the symbolic image that entered the collective imagination is that of the long queues of savers at the branches of Northern Rock and if in 2008 it was that of managers who came out with their boxes from the headquarters of an unthinkably bankrupt Lehman Brothers, the symbolic image of the summer of 2011 is more prosaic but, at the same time, more dramatic: it is that of the impotence of politics represented by Obama's bewildered gaze in front of Congress or from the inconclusiveness of the Merkel-Sarkozy summit a few weeks ago. From a domestic point of view, it could be added that the symbolic image of the unsettled summer of 2011 is the meeting between ministers Calderoli and Sacconi who, incredibly bypassing minister Tremonti under the complacent wings of the prime minister, decide to exchange the supertax of the maneuver with the blocking of redemption of the degree and military service for the purposes of retirement, only to then admit, a few days later, that he had made a mistake in the calculations and cancel everything, without ever even remotely thinking about development problems.
In an already so worrying international context, it is not surprising that a country like Italy, which "floats declining", as the economist Angelo Tantazzi effectively says in the interview with Firstonline, and which has become "the Japan of Europe" for its appalling debt and anemic growth, it is among the main candidates to pay the price and has long been the target of the markets.
On the splendid terrace of the Grand Hotel of Villa d'Este, never as in these days the first question that circulated was: what will happen on Monday in Piazza Affari when the Stock Exchange reopens after the collapse on Friday and where will the spread between the Btp and the Bund arrive? But the second question, even more alarming and alarming than the first, was: what will the anniversary of a fatal date like that of 8 September be like for us Italians this year? Yes, what will happen on Thursday 8 September, when on the board of the ECB the president of the Bundesbank will ask the ECB and its president Jean-Claude Trichet to account for the reason why the central bank invests so much money in the purchase of BTPs without the Italy show that you want to do what mere reasonableness would have advised for some time and that is to reduce the public debt and support growth through reforms and liberalisations? It was precisely in Cernobbio that Minister Tremonti tried to respond, hoping that a reverse Versailles would not arrive and that, unlike 1919, this time it would not be Germany that would use an iron fist towards countries, such as Italy, defeated by the markets and from the figures of the economy. But it is useless to hide one's head in the sand and the unease that hovered between managers and bankers in Cernobbio and of which the president of Confindustria Emma Marcegaglia has somehow become the spokesperson is completely understandable: admitted and not granted that the balances of budget are respected, the Ferragosto maneuver is an insipid soup compared to the depth and speed of the crisis because, beyond the inequities, it completely ignores the dimension of growth and arrives at the end of a show of indecorous wavering by a series of men of clearly unsuitable Government that have irreparably undermined its credibility.
It is not at all true that the Italians - as demonstrated by the extraordinary tax for the euro - are not willing to make sacrifices, even greater than those made up to now, but they would like the Government to finally speak the language of truth on the state of the country and clarify the purpose and objective of the sacrifices required.
Rightly speaking, the Head of State, speaking via teleconference in Cernobbio, replied that as long as there is a majority, one cannot think of changing the government. But the real question on the table is not this, but rather: what will happen tomorrow or on 8 September if the markets and the ECB were to turn their backs on Italy? The premier's entourage already has an answer and perhaps hope: the resignation of Economy Minister Tremonti. It is no coincidence that for a few days interested sources have been circulating the name of Lamberto Dini as that of his possible replacement. But making Tremonti the sole scapegoat for the failed management of the government's economic policy may be convenient for Silvio Berlusconi, but it is wholly improbable that he will serve to reassure the markets. So? In the halls and gardens of Cernobbio, two characters of international stature such as Mario Monti and Alessandro Profumo circulated, invested with the respect and attention of all. If the house burns down, who knows what the future will hold for them and for all of us.
