It was 2004 and Giulio Tremonti was no longer minister of the economy. In his place was Domenico Siniscalco who had to face two problems. According to a comment by Luigi Spaventa, which appeared in la Repubblica, the quality of Italian public spending was in line with European standards only in its quantitative dimension. But the public administration was unable to translate the services financed by expenditure, which in turn was guaranteed by revenue, into benefits for the weak. The state "gives more to those who have too little". A 24 billion maneuver was announced for the finance law but reductions in public debt were also mooted, through the sale of public assets and a reduction in the tax burden.
The international competitiveness of private enterprises was in decline; the degree of monopoly on many domestic markets is high. The risk of an expansion, if this economic policy, expansive and oriented towards greater equity, had been successful, would have been inflation from internal monopolies, supply inelasticity, a weak welfare regime and a limited ability to export. The risk of expansion, so to speak, was not taken and the dynamics of the economy, fortunately (sic), remained stagnant before and after the financial crisis of 2008. The direction and leadership of economic policy was ceded to Siniscalco, Giulio Tremonti , on September 2004, 9, but no one noticed that it was the third anniversary of 11/XNUMX, exposed the need to create a bank in the South.
The only large European region that didn't have one, with roots firmly connected to its territory. He was right in the observation and in the request. The hypothesis that he thought of developing was not exactly consistent with what should have been done. The complete article by Giulio Tremonti can be read again on the press review website of the Chamber of Deputies. According to Tremonti, the successful unification "has annihilated southern society, and as a consequence, has interrupted its development process". “Ancient and glorious sovereign capitals were transformed into prefectures, without the center of gravity of a strong municipal civilization in the south”: The first statement could be questionable, the second is certainly acceptable.
After the trauma, a consequence of the events described, only one force, one power survived in the South, the southern banking system. But in the nineties even that collapsed, Tremonti does not say but it is clear that the collapse is generated by the crisis that leads to the second republic. Having survived, that southern banking system, only thanks to the circumstance that, in the first republic, contrary to what we have been able to ascertain in the second, the southern ruling class really reached the ganglia of national power and, in this way, guaranteed control, for better or for worse, of southern banks and their survival. Once those ganglia were uprooted, and since there was no municipal culture, which feeds on its savings and its own knowledge – someone could here recognize an anticipation of the logical roots of the singular decentralization federalism subsequently re-proposed by the league – a strange dilemma remained at midday.
"Public finance is almost as a historical compensation called upon to replace private finance from outside and private finance - the one that exists - is not in any case typical of the south". Tremonti's statement is really accurate: in the southern economy, which has always been dependent and subsidized for at least a hundred years, there is no endogenous ability to channel one's savings towards an investment that fuels growth. That saving exists but it always takes on other and different destinations. As can be seen even today and despite the radical transformation of the national banking system, which took place from 2004 to the present day. Antonio Fazio replied negatively to Tremonti's hypothesis of adding another bank in the south, perhaps in a cooperative form, and certainly an expression of human resources and local culture, to give themselves a suitable tool for creating their own future. With a speech delivered in Lecce, for the successful restoration of the branch of the Bank of Italy. September 25, 2004. Promptly.
According to Antonio Fazio “There is no need for new intermediaries or new categories of credit institutions. The current and prospective development of the economy presides over the establishment of credit structures; Not vice versa. The promotion of greater bank efficiency and the ability to analyze creditworthiness and to support business projects, in a more decisive form of collaboration between banks, businesses and institutions, can improve credit assistance, help promote the recovery economy, give the best driving force for growth and employment”.
Years go by and the southern bank, the original denomination, changes because another one already exists, small and controlled by the only Italian banking foundation which, no longer having a bank in its portfolio, created a new one. Istituto Banco di Napoli, which sold its bank, Banco di Napoli, to BNL. Through various vicissitudes, the Banco di Napoli passed from BNL to Imi-San Paolo and landed in the Intesa group, where it is now the first southern bank, the territorial bank in the continental south. This new Banco di Napoli, which is not the original company incorporated by Imi-San Paolo, is a bank very similar to the Banca del Sud which, in its first interview, that of 2004, Tremonti had suggested. It is a very articulated retail bank in the area and, being controlled by a large European bank, it also acts by transferring complex products and services to the area, through its network of branches. It obviously does not have strategic financial intelligence, being a company controlled by a group, and, in this way, therefore, it does not exhaust Tremonti's idea in itself: a perfect identity between the territory and its destiny. The southern bank therefore becomes, by age, a southern bank. And as such, the attempt to bring it to life is pursued every two years. In 2006, first, then in 2009, finally in 2011. The architecture of this new institution has changed even more than its name: Sud per Mezzogiorno is an almost unnoticed change north of Caserta. Southern philology stuff.
The project now looks like this. Poste Italiane took over Mediocredito Centrale from Unicredit. The post offices are modernizing and are also taking on tasks of financial intermediation, on savings entrusted to them by the public, and on the management of means of payment and monetary transfers. They have a widespread network, in the South but also in the North. The post office could be joined by popular banks and cooperative credit banks. An immense network of branches in Italy, but much less dense, for both categories of banks in the South. Between post offices, and popular and cooperative credit banks, the network of the new bank in the South - this, in fact, should become Mediocredito Central – would be guaranteed.
Mediocredito – created by Guido Carli to finance and guarantee the credits of small and medium-sized Italian enterprises in the late fifties – still has today, like all now obsolete special credit institutions, an aptitude for evaluating investment projects , to the management of financial concessions, which are increasingly replaced by tax relief, considered more automatic and less cumbersome to manage, and administers an important apparatus of funds to guarantee the commercial credit of small and medium-sized enterprises. Equipping this machine, bureaucratized over the years and domiciled in Rome, with the legs of Poste Italiane, and with a network of branches belonging to cooperative banks or rural credit, means making it a reasonable competitor of the Banco di Napoli. Considering the bank itself as a coordinated and intelligent network of branches, and its controlling shareholder as a factory capable of offering services and products to families and businesses in the southern territory. One could even say that there would be more competition.
But there are already competitors, both in the system of cooperative banks, which are connected between north and south, and thanks to the presence of UniCredit which is very present and effective in the south. In short, as Fazio also said in 2004, it would be enough to leave the banks free to act. A laissez faire, laissez passer which is not in the intensions but not even in the original letter of Tremonti's thought. Instead, I think he really wanted to restore an identity to the South through an institution capable of representing the awareness, ideas and opinions of the southern ruling classes.
An institution that was capable, with those intellectual resources, of building a future for the southern economy: creating growth and development through southern businesses and entrepreneurs. To do this, the architecture potentially proposed by post offices, banks and Mediocredito Centrale is not needed. Mediocredito Centrale could be needed and some partners could be needed, additional to those gathered so far around the project. The new shareholders should be companies, banks and other southern institutions: a bank from the south that was not controlled by southern interests would really be strange. And if it were, in the future, and with the years necessary for its creation and adjustment, it would be nice to see it also listed on the stock exchange and capable of issuing bonds and other securities, listed on regulated markets. Perhaps after the entry into the capital of private shareholders and institutions domiciled in other Mediterranean nations. What is this midday bank supposed to be?
A development bank: capable of coordinating and resolving the difficulties and opportunities that the economic actors of the south could offer to our country, intercepting the financial and commercial dynamics that are agitating in the Mediterranean. A development bank that offers all the skills and capabilities to provide funds for infrastructure and business growth. A bank that is capable of giving the Mediterranean, its trilateral area (Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East, North Africa) the breathing space and opportunities of the civilization of exchanges. As happened in the season of the Phoenician emporiums located in the main ports that served as a hub for the merchant routes. Outside of this perspective, or locked up in the cage of yet another retail bank, for Southern families and businesses, the Banca del Sud would be an incomplete one. The maid that no one wanted and became a spinster.
