In 1982 Nikolas Kaldor, one of the most brilliant students of Keynes, wrote an essay with the title "The scourge of monetarism" which today recalls, by analogy, the scourge of the fiscal compat, whenever this is interpreted as the accountant of the neighborhood shopkeeper who can't stand the shopkeeper across the street. In fact, it should not be forgotten that underlying the parameters of Maastricht was the desire of some countries to exclude neighboring Italy from the single currency and to favor its deindustrialization in favor of the industries of central Europe.
Luckily for Italy and Europe – which the United Kingdom has a tremendous need for, but not vice versa – Mario Draghi is bringing the problem of public debt to last place in the rankings. With real interest rates kept close to zero in the medium term, as the ECB intends to do, and a medium-term real growth rate of GDP slightly above them, the GDP/public debt ratio first tends to stabilize and then decrease, as taught by an old and famous theorem forgotten by the new scourgers.
Therefore, in the case of Italy, to achieve such a real increase in GDP growth there is no need for helicopters that spread money or even new public investment flows that would compromise the debt/GDP ratio, but an increase in the productivity of the economic system. It is a task that today, in the context of a market economy in which investments by privatized public companies have disappeared, falls primarily on private companies in the industrial sector which, seizing the opportunity of the very low cost of money owed to the ECB, they are called upon to halt the fall – which has been going on for too many years – in the weight of their investments on the total investments of non-financial companies.
In fact, a simple indicator (Istat data) consisting of the composition of investments by non-financial companies divided between industry in the strict sense and the service sector (excluding financial ones) documents the overtaking of investments in sectors with lower potential productivity (trade, non-financial services and construction) compared to investments in industry in the strict sense endowed with greater productivity potential also because they are subject to the friction of international competition. Between the early 60s and the corresponding 50s, investment in industry in the strict sense fell from over 37% to less than 52%; the others grew from 53% of the total to XNUMX-XNUMX%. It is a sign of the regression of Italian industry towards the other protected sectors which would give strength to the scourgers of the fiscal compact. On the other hand, we must not cultivate the illusion that the increase in productivity comes from sectors protected from international competition which already enjoy other positional rents. The challenge is to transform potential productivity into real productivity.
Unfortunately, the behavior of Italian entrepreneurs at the time of privatizations contributes to the industrial regression, which documents the propensity of Italian family capitalism to enclose itself within the sectors protected by international competition. In the case of the Italian purchasers of public companies, the one aimed at diversifying the group's investments (Benetton, Caltagirone, Orlandi) in sectors other than manufacturing prevailed, as well as the one aimed at realizing the capital gains from the subsequent sale (closed-end funds, Rocca for the SIV and Riva for Seat). They were not always successful operations as evidenced by the ILVA case and that of the Piombino steelworks led by family groups unfit for the purpose.
Conversely, foreign industrial groups preferred to remain in the sector in which they had experience in order to increase their size and international presence in some strategic high-tech sectors. For example, the Krupp group which acquired AST-Acciaiai Speciali of Terni; the ABB-Asea Brown Boveri group which integrated Ebpa (leader in process control and automation systems in the energy sector); or the General Electric Company with the purchase of the Nuova Pignone. So new entrepreneurs are needed who love business risk also on international markets.
However, it is true that contributing to this regression of the industry is its pathological dependence on bank credit (almost always facilitated) disbursed in very ancient ways in respect of the pernicious "link with the territory", together with the correlated lack of investments and in the most innovative and competitive, which also require the use of risk capital to be raised on the market by expanding the family-based corporate structure. Family closure of the ownership structures which today confines many companies to "bank dependent dwarfism" and in traditional sectors with low productivity and a modest rate of investment in research and development. It is no coincidence that, once the possibility of resorting to the incentive policy of competitive devaluations which allowed for a price war on international markets, has ceased, the propensity not to invest in research and development of Italian companies has remained, still today among the lowest in the EU : 0,6 per cent of GDP in Italy, against around 1,2 on average for the EU-28, and 1,6 on the OECD average.
