Already in the 13th century, thanks above all to the Franciscans, the Church went beyond the consideration of the money like “the devil's dung” and interest rate on Loans as a grave sin, since it is a speculation on the passage of time that does not belong to man, but to God. Eight centuries have passed, but that conquest of thought from which the productive use of money derived and, therefore, the great economic awakening of the Renaissance, has not yet reached the deepest roots of widespread culture. Money, although it has become the exclusive and pervasive parameter of every value, is still visa on the other hand with distrust if not even as a bearer and symbol of inequalities and injustices.
The karst emergence of the dispute over the profits of banks and, more generally, on the so-called extra profits is a demonstration of clear evidence. And it was of little use that, already when this story began, the idea of a one-off taxation of them foundered badly because of the wound that would have been violently inflicted on the principle that in a free market system the legislator cannot establish how much a company, by its nature aimed at profit, should earn (obviously in compliance with the laws in force), therefore establishing a completely arbitrary limit to the fairness of its earnings, moreover discriminating according to the sector in which that company operates, and establishing the taxation of its profit after this has been achieved.
The Money Market: How Banks and Rates Work
I apologize for the banality, but evidently it is not superfluous to remember that in extreme synthesis a bank trades money: buys it from those who sell it to him and resells it to those who ask for it. Supply and demand for money at a bank are free and are expressed on the one hand by those who own the money, and on the other by those who need the money. prices? It should be obvious that if the supply of money to banks is very high, their remuneration will be low (and why shouldn't it be? Why should they pay, say, 4% if they are offered it in quantities at 2%?). The same goes for the reinvestment of that money: the bank will decide, according to its convenience, to whom to lend it (and why should it lend it at 2% if it can get 4%?) or to whom to redeposit it (for example, to the ECB according to the rate set by the latter in the framework of its monetary policy).
Bank Deposits: An Illusory “Savings” to Be Debunked
I apologize for this other banality, but it is not superfluous to remember that sight deposits in banks should not be considered savings; I repeat also on the basis of the interpretation given to the constitutional precept on the protection of savings: BANK DEPOSITS ARE NOT SAVINGS, but cash surpluses entrusted to the bank that holds them, keeps the accounts, and at the same time provides for payments and transfers: services that, if anything, must be remunerated. After all, if the sacrosanct principle according to which the remuneration of money must be proportional to the risk must be valid, why should a cash balance with a risk that is almost always equal to zero be remunerated?
Savings are those invested in bonds, stocks, real estate, productive initiatives with varying degrees of risk and, proportionally, of remuneration. From which it follows that any intervention from the top of the political legislative power justified by the opening of the gap between active and passive rates it is, among many other things, also counter-educational and contrary to the need, which should be felt in every slightly developed country, to induce greater and more direct participation of citizens in economic events both in the public and private sectors.
Tax on Extra Profits: Truth or Illusion?
Two final side notes. The first: if we talk about extra profits, why do we only consider those of banks and financial companies? Maybe because they don't vote and their penalization is difficult to connect with the interests of those who vote? There are quite a few extra profits around. The execrable 110% law, for example, was written so badly that (it's just one example among many that can be given) full list prices of products normally sold with a 30-40% discount were loaded onto the state budget (condensing boilers or air conditioning systems, for example). Extra profits were generated, indeed! Second note: it is said that the taxation of extra profits (sorry: contribution) is used for minimum pensions, the reduction of Irpef and other occurrences of the kind that were beautifully promised before the elections. But the coverage and a one-time entry of definitive occurrences is a political-accounting scam which only results in a postponement of the problem to the next budget. Over time, public spending has exploded also due to the reiteration of this populist practice.
