Homework is a bit like school exams: not only do you have to prepare them during the summer holidays, but they never end. Neither for Monti nor for Italy. A pickaxe on the public debt and the hunt for an idea for growth will dominate the resumption of government activity already scheduled for the end of next week, with an eye on the pitfalls of the markets in General August, but also on a horizon short and medium term. With great diligence "Il Sole 24 Ore" has tried to draw up a balance sheet of theactivity of the Monti government in its first 9 months of life and the result is in the numbers: 26 decrees passed since November of which 23 have already been converted and 17 bills approved by the Council of Ministers of which 8 have already become law.
Malgrado some errors of no small importance (the exodates above all), the Monti government - in addition to recovering credibility but perhaps we should say centrality on the international level - has completed the reform of pensions and employment, started the construction sites of liberalization and simplifications and those of the spending review and development. Compared to Monti's initial program lack of tax reform – and it is not little – and divestitures, which the premier has promised to relaunch as soon as possible.
The very fact that proposals after proposals are piling up on Monti's table at Palazzo Chigi (last, but certainly not least, those of the PDL and Astrid of Amato and Bassanini) is a good sign that measures the growing awareness that, even before let Europe remind us, without a pickaxe blow to our public debt that brings it closer to the psychological threshold of 100% of GDP in a reasonably short time it is difficult for Italy to recover the confidence of the markets but above all keep the accounts under control and reduce the ballast that weighs on the economy.
As far as growth is concerned, it is more than fair to operate on the whole keyboard of possible interventions (from training to research and innovation and support for start-ups, from tangible and intangible infrastructures to liberalisations) but without forgetting that their effects will not be able to reach short and that instead the results are needed immediately. Mission impossible? No, but under two conditions: that the 100 billion payments that the PA owes to businesses are immediately released and that, as he had pointed out Ernesto Auci on FIRSTonline on August 8th, there is only one idea that can produce short-term results for growth: reduce labor and corporate taxes by drawing resources from extensive and radical cuts in unproductive government spending.
Given the worsening economic situation and unemployment, the ideal (cf Andrea Terzi on FIRSTonline on August 9th) would be the launch of an extraordinary plan to reduce taxes on work and businesses promoted and coordinated by the European Union, but under the disappointing Barroso presidency it is unlikely that miracles can happen. And therefore Italy needs to get ready to go it alone.
Attacking the public debt is urgent but putting pressure on growth with the aim of collecting results immediately borders on the rash and does credit to those who engage in such a work at the end of the legislature, but there are those who do not see such an undertaking may not run out in a few months but also mark the path of future years; whether or not there will be a commissioning of Italy which could derive from the request for aid to Europe in the wake of Spain.
But if this is true, it is evident that Montismo cannot end up in the archive as if it were an occasional parenthesis, but you deserve to see your legacy defended and valued also in the next legislature. First on August 4th we have already made ratings on FIRSTonline so that the leader of the Democratic Party, Pierluigi Bersani, in the unlikely event of an electoral victory and assignment to form a new government, offers the Treasury chair to Mario Monti as guarantor of Italy's credibility vis-à-vis Europe and vis-à-vis the markets.
It is a pleasure to note that an authoritative observer such as Eugenio Scalfari in "La Repubblica" on Sunday 12 August you arrive at the same conclusions, arguing that Casini would be happy if the future Bersani government called Monti to continue its action taking into account the so-called Fassina decalogue.
Recently, the economic manager of the Pd Stefano Fassina (see "Il Foglio" of August 9 with the interview with Claudio Cerasa) has finally corrected his previous slips and has practically come to propose the same program as Merkel for the Europe, the Draghi line for the ECB and above all Monti's program itself "revived with a strong dose of social sensitivity" for Italy. "Better late than never" Scalfari rightly comments. One might add: if they are roses they will flourish. But we will see soon.
