When a new government is born, it is good institutional practice to send it best wishes in the hope that it will do something positive for the country. This does not mean that criticisms and underlining of programmatic contradictions are not only possible but also appropriate. This does not mean criminalize the new government structure in advance as Travaglio claims. Perhaps he doesn't remember exactly, but criticisms of the programs of the new governments have always been made and often in harsh tones. After all, in politics it is dangerous to say "let's wait to see what they do" because the government does not act as in a laboratory experiment, but it affects people's living flesh and therefore, once certain choices have been made, going back is very difficult and costly for all citizens.
According to what is written in the "contract", the government of change risks making changes, but WORSE. And that's why the two contracting parties have misunderstood the analysis of the Italian situation and consequently they propose a treatment that would aggravate the disease, i.e. leading to results opposite to those thought by Salvini and Di Maio. The Italian crisis derives, it is now evident, from the more than twenty-year block on growth and the stagnation of productivity. I add two marginal notes: from the tax returns of professionals published by Sun 24 Hours it is understood that the general crisis has also hit the middle class hard with cuts in their incomes between 20 and 30%. This shows that here there is not so much a problem of growing inequality but the general consequence of the prolonged recession which has affected all incomes, obviously making those who were already on the verge of poverty worse off. The right recipe is therefore to get Italy back on track, to grow more and create more jobs, not so much to redistribute the little we have.
Secondly, I would like to mention Sen Bagnai who, speaking in the Senate during the debate on trust, attacked the EU, stating that there was no solidarity and that Italy was not helped. Perhaps Bagnai does not remember that in 2011 there was support from the ECB and that the Commission was also available to do something if Italy had complied with the commitments it had assumed and which were summarized in the famous letter from the ECB and the Banca d' Italy. And it was precisely the League that opposed the pension reform, the containment of local finance and the reform of the labor market. It was the League that brought down Berlusconi for the second time. Now raise the bar. Having become a sovereignist, rather than a Po Valley, she aims to leave Europe and isolate us from the rest of the world.
Lega and 5 Stars think in a simplistic way that the fault of the crisis lies with the elites who are at the service of dark forces and more or less criminal lobbies who have deliberately starved the people with extreme cynicism. Furthermore, widespread corruption among politicians and businessmen has stolen hundreds of billions from citizens' income. From this it follows that the change of the political class is enough to be able to satisfy the expectations of the people on pensions, the basic income and the reduction of the tax burden. On corruption, people's "perception" appears far from reality. We are no more corrupt than other countries. More or less, as Carlo Cottarelli demonstrated in his recent book, we are on the same level as the others. But insisting on the fight against corruption entails serious risks for democracy, leading to liberticidal measures such as that of agents provocateurs. The problem of corruption must be tackled - and this also applies to the Canton - with a reduction of the perimeter of the State and with a complete review of the tasks of the bureaucracy and of the various authorization regimes.
With the cry "the people want it" Salvini and Di Maio launch the assault on our market rules and competition that we have given ourselves with great effort in recent years. There are plans to nationalize Alitalia, to close down and reconvert Ilva, to change the reform of popular and cooperative credit, to penalize companies that want to invest abroad, to increase the annual deficit and perhaps if the market does not want to lend us the money necessary for the desired expenses, to issue mini-bots. In short the trivial idea of the yellow-greens is to give everyone money. If it worked it is not clear why over the centuries no ruler had thought of it! In this context, it is no wonder that, despite the commendable efforts of Minister Tria who reaffirmed the government's willingness to reduce the debt and remain firmly anchored to the Euro, the market is skeptical about the real intentions of the populists in government .
In fact Salvini and Di Maio seem to be dreaming a return to the “mythical” 70s when the country was sovereign, we could print as many lire as we wanted but we had inflation at 20%, businesses fled Italy, and there was the guerrilla warfare of the BR and NAR. Which Garden of Eden are we talking about? We had to put administrative constraints on all the financial activities of banks and individuals (Savona should remember this well) in short, we were busy building a wall every day that was supposed to protect us from the rest of the world and instead it soon appeared to us for what it really was : a prison within which we were languishing.
There are already sinister crunches both on the financial markets and in the real economy where the economy is slowing down. Our banks are suffering from the spread increase and are already blocking credit. Private individuals are slowing down investments, while public ones are being hindered by the government itself. After the unfortunate sortie on MPS and Cassa depositi e prestiti, everyone is looking with apprehension at the future of the banking sector which is suffering from the collapse of government bonds and the confused idea of wanting to compensate the shareholders of failed banks. And those who have suffered similar losses for having bought shares of banks which then saved themselves? Attention it must be said clearly and loudly that if you really wanted to apply the recipes written in the "contract" we risk waking up not in the Garden of Eden but directly in hell. And this time the Monti-Fornero recipe will seem like aspirin to then come out.
Read also: “The yellow-green contract and the risks for the economy”: conference on 12 June
