It had already been understood for days that the Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, would end up proposing the reappointment of Ignazio Visco to the head of the Bank of Italy for another six years in the name of a continuity that the 2005 law did not impose and indirectly advised against having been created, in the wake of the Fazio scandal, to limit the term of office of central bank governors. When the secretary of the Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, after the clumsy anti-Visco parliamentary motion, was repeating that, even though he thought diametrically opposed to the prime minister, he would respect the choices made by Palazzo Chigi on the Bank of Italy, it was all too clear where the went to parry. And so it exactly happened.
But the surprise, beyond the appointment of Visco, remains strong and can be summed up in a question that has been circulating on the political scene for days and which can be explained as follows: how is it possible that a shrewd premier like Gentiloni chooses for the Banca d the line of continuity despite the fact that in Parliament there is not a single relevant political force willing to defend the delays and blunders of the banking supervision of Via Nazionale which unfortunately did not avoid the crises of four banks in central Italy and two banks in the Veneto and that they cost tears and blood to thousands of shareholders and savers of those institutions? It is a question that perhaps will not find an immediate answer but which will not end with the reconfirmation of Ignazio Visco at the helm of the Bank of Italy and which cannot fail to have both political and institutional effects, well beyond the predictable battle in the parliamentary commission investigation into the banking system.
It would be banal to answer that the law entrusts the power to appoint the Governor of the Bank of Italy to the Government without parliamentary interference, because the Prime Minister is the first to know that the Government does not live on the moon and that, while exercising its decision-making , faced with an institutional choice of the first magnitude, cannot ignore and much less snub the point of view of its majority shareholder (the Democratic Party which supports it) nor that of all the political forces.
There are those who say that Gentiloni was pushed to break with Renzi for various reasons that perhaps overlapped beyond the very intentions of the protagonists on the pitch. The most widespread vulgate interprets the premier's move on the Bank of Italy as an inevitable reaction to the unexpected anti-Visco motion of the Democratic Party and as a response to the requests of the President Emeritus of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, who not by chance stigmatized the " undue pressure” exerted on Gentiloni for recourse to votes of confidence in the electoral law. Faced with all this, the prime minister could not but strike a blow if he did not want to completely crush Matteo Renzi's line more of struggle than of government. All interesting hypotheses but, like the same institutional continuity that the President Sergio Mattarella would have discreetly suggested, not fully convincing or exhaustive, because in the face of the evident inadequacy of banking supervision, political tactics are giving up the time they find.
The hypotheses on the lack of authoritative alternative candidates for the leadership of the Bank of Italy, which existed both inside and outside the institute in Via Nazionale and which certainly could not be configured as detrimental to the independence of the central bank, also appear to be completely unfounded. Finally, someone mentions the role that international pressure may have played in Gentiloni's choice, beyond the pro-Visco suggestions that may have come from ECB president Mario Draghi who, in truth, was not listened to by the Berlusconi government when six years makes Visco instead of Fabrizio Saccomanni promoted as new Governor. But this is a treacherous terrain because, if names and surnames are not known precisely, the reference to indistinct and underground international pressures fuels unpleasant suspicions or becomes only a convenient alibi for difficult internal choices such as those concerning the Bank of Italy.
Much will therefore have to be clarified on the real reasons that prompted the prime minister to choose Visco's reappointment as head of the central bank, but two points seem inescapable right now: the first concerns the government and Gentiloni himself and the second concerns the Banca d' Italy.
It is legitimate to think that the premier's rift on the Governor cannot fail to push the Democratic Party and its secretary to consider the Gentiloni government in this last part of the legislature as a "friendly government", that is, as a government in which one trusts but even not and who will therefore be asked to pay ever higher prices, starting with the budget manoeuvre, in order to earn consensus. As for the premier, it has not yet been understood whether his government path will end in this legislature or will have an aftermath, but in both cases it is difficult to imagine that his relations with the secretary of the Democratic Party remain exactly the same as before .
As regards the Bank of Italy, Visco's reconfirmation is coupled with the general rejection of its Supervision in the face of the banking crises of recent years. Via Nazionale is right in pointing out that his action has avoided other crises, but in these cases the falling tree makes more noise than the growing forest and is not enough to console savers who have lost fortunes, large or small. It is therefore time for the rules and people to change. It is true that the Supervisory rules of Via Nazionale often derive from the changeable, suffocating and contradictory Supervision of the ECB but the fact remains that, even in their national application, they are baroque and often ineffective, too attentive to formalisms and little to substance, except when the oxen have already escaped from the stable. At the time of Antonio Fazio's governorship it was enough to think of a notorious banker like Gianpiero Fiorani to understand how the Bank of Italy, despite the dissent of some courageous voices, had completely lost the right course.
In more recent times, the Supervision of the Bank of Italy has identified as the possible savior of Banca Etruria first and of Veneto Banca then the prime architect of the disaster of Banca Popolare di Vicenza, that Gianni Zonin who today the judiciary puts in the dock . You didn't have to be the Einsteins of Banking Supervision to know who Zonin was and those who didn't understand him in time took fireflies for lanterns. Now, therefore, it's up to Ignazio Visco, who is a gentleman and a mirrored person, to do his part as the reconfirmation requires him: an uproar is not enough, quickly chase away those who have made a mistake and do it without looking at anyone . Savers will certainly be grateful to them.
