We must “create gods portfolios that self-protect savers from inflation, in which investments in proprietary securities play a primary role. The proposal provides for a balanced composition between securities and real estate activities, entrusting profitability to the performance of the real economy, thus relieving monetary policy of the weight of unusual maneuvers on interest rates”. The president of the said Consob, Paolo Savona, in his speech at the usual annual meeting with the financial community at the Milan Stock Exchange.
Savona specified that "the technical solutions can be different and politics would have the main task of creating the most suitable legal acceptance structure, to give life to a saving mechanism”. In any case, according to the Consob president, an alternative to monetary and fiscal policy tightening is needed and "a first step to take is channeling savings towards the productive initiatives of companies of any size".
This proposal was born in a context in which, in the face of a good hold of Italian savings in 2021, today "the first indications of a slowdown in flows are being perceived. The tendency to invest in speculative instruments and foreign markets has also clearly emerged, which showed a marked acceleration in the course of 2021, choices not always based on rational criteria. Entrusting the care of these attitudes to the market alone, often prompted by forecasts that reality has taken it upon itself to deny, could cause serious economic and social consequences, as well as being in conflict with the constitutional provision which considers savings a public good ”.
Savona believes that inflation is "an unfair tax that violates the founding principles of democracy”. For this reason "an alternative way must be found to prevent it from affecting financial and real stability, eroding the two pillars on which our growth and welfare are based".
"Simplify to curb the flight of companies to foreign stock exchanges"
The number one of Consob then remarked that "a significant part of Italian companies, especially those that could strengthen the range of listed companies, are moving to foreign stock exchanges or financial marketsbecause they are attracted to regulatory advantages offered by other countries and not present in our system or, more simply, discouraged by administrative complexity of the procedures required to access and remain among the listed companies".
The Commission "is moving with the competent authorities in view of a simplification that will curb a possible deterioration of our financial ecosystem and promote an enlargement not only of the regulated markets - added Savona - In this context, a profitable expansion of the intermediaries that intervene in different forms to support businesses worthy of financing, attracting and investing well the resources of the most far-sighted savers".
“We need an international conference on cryptocurrencies”
Savona then returned to talk about cryptocurrency, underlining that, "besides the choices to be made for the treatment of the virtual tools and the techniques used, it is also necessary to define an overall institutional framework of the problems that have arisen, which calls for the convening of an international conference to re-establish a smooth functioning of the global monetary and financial system or, at least, of that part of the world willing to collaborate in this direction".
Savona recalled that "at the recent meeting of the G7 finance ministers, the urgency of regulating the various forms and uses of cryptocurrency was reaffirmed, providing the precise indication that virtual instruments must be treated like traditional ones".
Therefore, Savona reiterated that he agrees "with the need to convene an international conference, which has on the agenda the inclusion of the cryptocurrency market in the existing standardization, but does not neglect the implementation of the innovative accounting techniques used by finance".
“Public legislation on cryptocurrencies would prevent scams”
Furthermore, "public legislation on the subject would re-establish the monetary monopoly and regulatory power of the States and their international agreements, today left to a significant extent to the will of cryptocurrency operators, who have given themselves their own rules, spontaneously accepted by customers, and have pushed to the point of establishing the criteria for the direct management of any conflicts by the platforms themselves, expropriating the state judiciary".
According to Savona, “investors show that they appreciate the services of these intermediaries, despite the fact that management is not very transparent, but they can hide illegal behavior and the technologies used are vulnerable, as evidenced by recent episodes of scams and hacking. It is hoped that the holders of virtual instruments are aware of fully assuming such responsibilities, even if they can invoke the involvement of the authorities on the basis of the observation that partial public interventions have legitimized the presence on the market of cryptocurrencies and their hybridization of traditional instruments".
