In the great confusion of ideas that reigns under the Italian sky, especially after the elections of 4 March, it is heartening to re-read the speeches by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to the Italian Banking Association, now collected in a precious volume published by Laterza, in collaboration with the Abi and with the Luigi Einaudi Institute for banking, financial and insurance studies. The precision of the language, the thoughtfulness, the clarity of ideas on the underlying objectives, the attention to detail, the ability to always put the nation's interest at the center are striking.
It is even more striking to note that many of Ciampi's strong ideas, which were the ideas of various generations of Italian reformists, are now forgotten or openly contested. It is therefore worth re-reading Ciampi to understand where we started from, how far we have come, how much effort we have made to complete that journey and why today it would be harmful to go back, to an Italy enclosed within its own economic and financial, but also political and cultural.
The objective that Ciampi pursued with extraordinary perseverance over the decades was to bring Italy to the level of the most advanced nations, from an economic, financial and banking point of view. Hence also the priority objective of ensuring that Italy enters the single currency right from the start. In his speech in June 1996, when it was not at all clear whether Italy would be able to enter the leading group, Ciampi did not hide the difficulties, but forcefully reiterated: "Staying, even temporarily, 'out' would have effects, repercussions, which would go beyond the significant economic, financial and monetary consequences".
And he added: “There is no need to say more. Each of us, deep down knows it, feels it”.
Today some say that for Italy joining the euro was a wrong choice. Someone questions the legitimacy of that transfer of sovereignty, as if it were a coup de main. This is not the case: joining the single currency was the shared objective of the whole nation, of the political parties, of the social partners and of public opinion. That broad sharing originated from the awareness that, by staying outside, Italy would be precluded from modernization goals that went well beyond the economic and monetary sphere.
Joining the Euro meant for Ciampi putting an end to a state of disorder in the economy that had characterized it since the end of the sixties. That disorder manifested itself in high inflation, frequent devaluations of the exchange rate, and growing public debt. Ultimately, it arose from a serious failure of politics and perhaps of society as a whole: the inability to measure aspirations against reality, objectives against means. That mess has cost the Italians dearly, who have seen their savings decimated by inflation, and it is still costing dearly because of a public debt that we are still far from eradicating.
Of that disorder, of which we have a distorted memory today, many seem to be nostalgic. One longs for a golden age, which never existed, except perhaps in the first two decades after the war.
Since the end of the sixties, Italy has always been in crisis or on the verge of crisis, always in need of the shield of the Monetary Fund or the European Community, therefore always very weak, also due to political instability, on the international arena. It survived the international turbulence of the seventies with the shield of the letter of intent signed in February 1974 by Guido Carli with the International Monetary Fund which, however, did not prevent the serious exchange rate crisis of January 1976 and an inflation which, also due to the Lama-Agnelli on the escalator, was always higher than in all other advanced countries. It survived the 1992s by running up debt and putting all the burdens on future generations. The Italians began to pay the bill with the XNUMX crisis.
Ciampi was lucidly aware of Italy's fragility and, as a patriot that he was, he couldn't rest. He hoped that with the Euro Italy would finally begin to count and he said it clearly in June 1998, by which time the goal of the Euro had been achieved: "Today the goal is not «to stay in Europe», but «to count in Europe": Italy, with its national identity, with its economic strength, will be fundamental in realizing the European plan, outlined forty years ago in the Treaty of Rome".
Today many think that if there were no euro, the balance of power between Italy and Germany would be more favorable to Italy, but they are very wrong and do not remember what happened before the euro.
For Ciampi, bringing Italy to the level of the most successful countries also meant liberalizing the financial sector, eliminating that enormous mass of constraints that crippled its efficiency. Today we complain about the banks, the loans given to friends of friends, the placements of unsuitable risky products for small savers. But then the banking system was a large bureaucracy, mostly subservient to this or that political potentate. Yet even in this case there are many who long for a return to public banking, once again nostalgic, perhaps unaware, of a golden age that never happened.
Today those who defend competition policies, especially in the financial sector, are often accused of being in the grip of a sort of "neoliberal infatuation". In some countries the liberalizations went beyond what was due, but not in Italy where, as Ciampi's writings testify, it was quite evident that an immobile system provided a bad service to families and the corporate system.
Not everything works at its best today and, as Governor Visco stated at the presentation of the volume, crucial issues such as the management of banking crises have not yet been fully resolved in the new European structure. But it would be really harmful if someone were under the illusion of solving today's problems with an impossible return to the past.
Excellent article. It seems to me that everything that animated us in the nineties has been forgotten, in reaction to the worst that had been done in the seventies and eighties. This memory involution is the most concerning thing