“I will say something that may seem paradoxical but which, instead, could be the egg of Columbus for this government: if Salvini and Di Maio stopped campaigning for a few months and offered all their support to the policy announced by Minister Tria, then the coalition could achieve great success by quickly bringing our spread back below the level of Spain (between 80 and 100 points) with great relief for public finances and for companies, especially small ones, which could benefit from a greater flow credit at much lower rates. And this would boost the Italian economy to a greater extent and more quickly than any tax cuts or other expansionary budget policies”.
Giampaolo Galli, economist, former director general of Confindustria and former parliamentarian of the PD, he observes with concern the first moves, and even more the sea of declarations, of the two dioscuri of the yellow-green government. Economy Minister Giovanni Tria appears to be the only one with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He enunciated a strategy based on the confirmation of the need to maintain a downward path for our debt, on the refusal to blow up the public finances with spending in deficit, and on the strong revaluation of investments as a lever to put the center of our economic policy the problem of maintaining and, if possible, strengthening our rate of development.
So Salvini and Di Maio should put an end to any ambiguity and clearly say that Italy will never leave the Euro and that the promises made during the electoral campaign will be implemented when our economic situation is more flourishing?
“Salvini and Di Maio, especially the first, have never said a clear word about the Euro and have never given convinced public support to the indications provided by Minister Tria. If they did, investor confidence in Italy would probably increase a lot, given that we are in any case a country with a respectable industrial base. If our spread hadn't fallen further last year it was due to uncertainty about what a populist government would do if it won the March elections (as it did). Now, therefore, the Government could clarify its positions and completely dispel investors' fears about Italy. This would lead within a few weeks to a reduction in interest rates and the possibility of increasing public and private investments with positive effects on employment. Only in this way, however, will it be possible to truly safeguard the dignity of workers ".
But this is not done because it appears very distant not only from the electoral rhetoric adopted by the Lega and 5 Stars, but also because those parties do not have the adequate culture within them to truly understand how a modern market economy, open to the rest of the world, works , and which wants to remain open as is convenient for a heavily exporting country like ours.
“There has been a completely incorrect narrative of our crisis. All the blame has been placed on Europe (which may not have worked very well) but which certainly is now recording a good and generalized recovery in all countries, except ours. Above all, the conviction that there are no limits to the creation of money has spread among voters. People no longer understand why the public budget must remain under control. The word "solidarity" is abused. It is repeated, without fully understanding its meaning, that the ECB must be a lender of last resort, that is, it must guarantee all of our public debt which would therefore become a business of the whole of Europe and not ours. No one knows that the Fed, towards which we want to tend, does not buy the securities of the individual states of the federation and those of the municipalities. On the other hand, the ECB already owns more than 16% of our public bonds”.
Indeed they say that the spread is a scam or, if they are polite, a fluff, that is, useless stuff. But it gets worse. The government contract lacks a clear indication towards a growth policy. It seems that the development relaunch is a priority only for Tria.
“This is one of the most puzzling things. The contract never mentions competitiveness or productivity. It is not said what reforms one would like to make, for example in terms of Justice and the Public Administration to create an environment favorable to business. There is no tension towards the issues of growth including the questions of training of people, while on the fiscal level the question of the wedge that pushes the cost of labor up and the net salary down has disappeared. It almost seems as if he has succumbed to the temptations of “degrowth happy” which has been a strong point of the ideologue Grillo. But we have already experienced the decline so much that we are still the only European country to have a per capita income of 8 points below that of 2007. The others have long ago recovered from the fall due to the great crisis and I'm now way above it. And it doesn't seem to me that this decrease has brought our citizens greater happiness!”
We live in a bubble of simplistic rhetoric according to which our political leaders want to reach people directly by satisfying all their needs, without going through the "useless" mediations of the market or the complicated ways of managing a complex society full of contradictions. The risk is that of introducing measures which, instead of pursuing the stated aim, lead to completely opposite consequences. The dignity decree (the only thing the government has done so far) seems to me a good example of this erroneous approach.
“While it declares its intention to simplify the rules, the reasons for fixed-term contracts are reintroduced which are nothing more than a new bureaucracy that will only give rise to greater litigation, and the small businesses that Di Maio in theory would like to favour, above all, will suffer. Even on relocations, apart from the difficulty in defining them on a case-by-case basis, penalties are introduced which will only create new uncertainty, alienating investors. Other than simplifications, with these rules comes a new and hypocritical bureaucracy that will hinder the life of businesses. When we say heterogenesis of ends! The same thing is happening with the disinterest shown on the trend of the spread. It does not take into account the fact that the fall in the quotations of public securities erodes the assets of the banks which will therefore be forced to ration credit to businesses and households. And I believe that already some credit crunch is in place. If you want to skip all the steps, you risk creating opposite consequences to those intended".
Even the question of our permanence in the Euro does not appear definitively resolved. While on the one hand Tria appears clear in stating that no one in this government thinks of getting out of it, equally clear statements are not heard from the other members of the coalition.
“Many continue to think that regaining our monetary sovereignty would give us great advantages, but this is not the case. Salvini who appears always cautious on the subject, I think he thinks that if Italy managed to stay in the Euro it would be better, but that if by chance a crisis in Europe were to occur (even triggered not directly by us) this should not be tackled as the Greeks did with the acceptance of the troika and austerity, but with a tear that places us outside the Euro. The consequences for citizens would be much worse than those inflicted by the troika's cure, but politically the responsibilities could be shifted to others. This ambiguity helps to keep the spread high and consequently our imbalances do not heal, so the risk increases is that we could find ourselves in the classic case of self-fulfilling prophecies".
But in addition to the politicians there are important economists who say that leaving the Euro would be more convenient for Italy than languishing under the heel of this European austerity. Stigliz, to cite the most sensational case, but here also Savona and Bagnai.
“As regards Paolo Savona, I have read his recent declarations in which he affirms that this government has no intention of leaving the Euro. Too bad they didn't have much resonance. It would be useful in order to calm the markets, if prof. Savona sided with greater determination in support of Minister Tria's line. Stigliz is a character to be taken with a grain of salt. By now, even in America, his outbursts in the field of political assessments are mocked. We recall a famous letter from Rogoff, then head of the research office of the International Monetary Fund, in which Stiglitz is invited to make self-criticism of his wrong statements on the crisis in Asian countries.
Not only that but it is known that this brilliant economist is not right as a policy maker. He supported Argentina just before the tragic crash, then Maduro's policy in Venezuela and now he says that Italy would like to leave the Euro. These are intellectual games conducted in an honest way and on the skin of the citizens of the countries that come under his attention. About Italy he says things that are impossible to achieve, such as exiting the single currency through the creation of mini-bonds which, according to him, would be a system for enjoying the advantages of devaluation (but then would they really exist?) without openly declaring that they have exited the EUR. An impossible thing given that by violating all the rules it would force Europe to kick us out, but above all out of the civilized way of life that would forever undermine the credibility of our country.
Lastly, I would like to quote a sentence from the book by sen. Bagnai (The decline of the Euro): 'The voters will show no mercy towards those who find themselves governing at the time of the exit from the Euro'. And let's hope that this will convince Salvini to change course or the voters to send him home before the crack ".
