On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the euro, which falls on 2 January, 2011 closes without knowing whether to celebrate the birthday of the single currency or prepare for its sad and incredible funeral. This doubt is enough to remind us that the 2011 it hasn't been a normal year and that it will be impossible to forget it, because it marked a decisive turning point in our recent history with a vertiginous escalation and an unpredictable evolution of the most serious economic and financial crisis of the last eighty years. A crisis which, although born on 9 August 2007 in America with the alarm of subprime mortgages, shifted its center of gravity to Europe in 2011 with the crisis of public debt and sovereign risks which is seriously putting the euro at risk and Europe itself. In the first three months of the new year it will be understood whether the euro can really survive or whether there will be a return to national currencies or to a two-speed euro with the effect of aggravating and extending the recession under way in Italy and in a part of Europe, to the point of turning it into depression. What is certain is that the euro is at the showdown and is at the crossroads of history: either it finds the right bank to strengthen itself or it must prepare for an inglorious retreat with ruinous effects on the economy of the Old Continent and the world entire.
This is why we will remember 2011 as the year of the euro crisis and the year of sovereign risk or – and more symbolically – as the year of the spread. Until a few months ago, few ordinary citizens knew what the spread was and how important it was to check the yield differential between the ten-year BTP and the German Bund to measure the reliability of our country. But when – on 9 November 2011 – the earthquake of the markets brought down our stock market and brought the spread to record levels, everyone began to understand that the euro war had truly entered its crucial phase and that from now on anything could happen. Even the unthinkable: like the end of the single currency or Italy's exit from the euro. And everyone has understood that the theater of battle of Europe and of the world is Italy.
But how was it possible to reach the point of crisis into which we have fallen and that is one step away from the bankruptcy of Italy and the euro? There Gallery which FIRSTonline presents, drawing from the archive of our first six months of life, helps us to reconstruct passages and decisive stages of the screwing of the euro crisis and the spread on themselves.
It all started between the end of spring and the passing of summer when the Greek crisis, serious but in itself limited, began day after day to grow in intensity and danger due to the incomprehensible fluctuations and incredible short-sightedness of the Franco-German directorate. Myopia especially of Mrs. Merkel who fueled the belief in the markets that the default of Greece was inevitable and that the consequent domino effect would have triggered the contagion of the most indebted European countries – starting from Italy – up to overwhelm everyone, even the most solid, including France and Germany. The stages of the 2011 escalation of the euro crisis are there for all to see.
The first alarm bell rang on April 15 when the German "wise men" thundered against European aid to Greece. On May 100, French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher began to speak of the "risk of contagion" and the Germans began to say that the EU could not guarantee the Greek debt XNUMX%. The whole summer was punctuated by street protests in Greece against unprecedented austerity, by the death knell of the rating agencies and by the unforgivable uncertainties of Germany and France on the management of the Greek debt.
Greece was for Europe what the unexpected bankruptcy of Lehman was for the USA: a trap and a tragic mistake that magnified the crisis and made it even more systemic.
Il 25 July Moody's downgraded Greece's rating by three notches and ruled that Greece's default was virtually certain. Music to the ears of speculation which, faced with the worsening of the economic situation and the risk of recession, identified in the probable Greek default the picklock to question the sustainability of the major European public debts (Italy in the lead) and blow up the single currency itself. On 12 September the crisis takes another qualitative leap because the German vice-chancellor Philip Roesler does not rule out Greece going bankrupt and the Greek government, through its Deputy Economy Minister Filippos Sachinidis, raises the alarm by reminding all of Europe that, in the absence of new aid, Athens has resources to survive only until October.
Since then, for Italy and for Europe, nothing has been as before, up until the crisis of the Greek government and the market earthquake of 9 November in Italy, when the stock market collapsed, the spread - which in April it was at 123 bps and on July 185 at XNUMX bps – it flew al record level by 557 basis points and yields on ten-year BTPs have for the first time overtaken 7%, making visible the difficult sustainability of the third highest public debt in the world in the absence of economic growth. It was inevitable that the Berlusconi government, which until August denied the existence of an Italian crisis, ingloriously exited the scene a few days later and that President Napolitano called to replace him a government of technicians led by the economist and new life senator Mario Monti.
The last weeks of 2011 were extremely hectic. THE government bond auctions Italians began to keep everyone in suspense but the domino effect ended up hitting the France and question both the tightness of its banks and the triple A and to shake Germany itself which for the first time has known the shame of failure of a bund auction. On December 9 theagreement of the Europe of 26 - noting the break with Great Britain - has strengthened the state-saving fund and initiated a change in European governance welcome to Germany which should secure the budgets of the member states with a more severe common fiscal discipline and with automatic sanctions against those who go astray .
The new president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, did the rest, cutting i twice rates and launching an unlimited injection of liquidity into the European banking system severely tested by the EBA's questionable risk assessment criteria and capital ratios.
Europe knows it is at war to save the euro but what makes the outcome of the battle still uncertain is the absence of a bazooka plan which places at the disposal of states in difficulty unlimited means to address sovereign risk and make public debt sustainable. In spite of the monetary orthodoxy that seems to ignore the state of absolute emergency, Europe should treasure the American lesson and make the ECB the lender and guarantor of last resort for the debt of the member countries. In the absence of this, it is inevitable that 2011 will end in the sign of maximum uncertainty and that 2012 will open in the most absolute fog over the future of the euro. And of Europe.
