“If someone is in need, we are here, without doing the interventions of the past”. These are the words with which the deputy prime minister and Northern League leader Matteo Salvinion the sidelines of the hall Horse iron in Verona, he replied to those who asked him if he agreed with the words of the undersecretary to the Prime Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti on the hypothesis of a recapitalization of some banks in the event of a spread of 400.
Incredible. But weren't the banks the enemies of the people? So said the League and the Five Stars, but in the last legislature. Remember the controversy over the bailout of failing banks? It seemed that the Renzi and Gentiloni governments, instead of helping savers mocked by mala gestio of some institution, as it was their duty, they wanted to give money to bankers. But that of the League and the Five Stars was pure demagoguery. As was and is the one about state aid to Monte dei Paschi which, with the rescue and recapitalization conceived by the previous governments, saved Italy from a crisis that would have involved the entire national and European banking system, even if the Northern League Borghi, elected in the constituency of Siena, is too blinded by propaganda to recognize it.
Now that it BTP-Bund spread runs the risk of dangerously approaching 400 and therefore imposing new capital increases on banks (which means fewer home loans and fewer loans to businesses and families), Salvini is starting to worry. And it was about time he did. But, instead of affecting the effects (the spread that rises and damages the banks, as the president of the ECB, Mario Draghi also warned), would it not be wiser to act on the causes (i.e. make an economic policy that respects European rules, avoid ruining the public finances and really aim at the growth and employment of young people rather than the pensions of those who want to leave their jobs early and welfarism in the south through the phony CBI)?
It would be truly paradoxical if the sovereign and populist government that promised or threatened open war on the banks – as if the capitalist economy could function without financial intermediation – would go down in history as the government which, due to its mistakes, was forced to employ huge resources in the rescue of the banks rather than in the growth and work of young people.
