The economy is going but social unease creates anger against the elite

THEItalian economy she has never looked this good in ten years now. The growth of product and occupation strengthened in 2017 more than expected. The foreign debt has almost canceled out, from a quarter of GDP in 2013. The debt has begun to decline, again as a percentage of GDP. The investments, hitherto missing link in the recovery underway for twenty quarters, have returned to increase. L' export gains market share, despite the revaluation of the euro. There has been measurable progress in many structural areas that traditionally constrain the country. Also bank balance sheets I am in rapid rebalancing.

The photography in deliberately, but not necessarily, positive colors is contained in the Final Considerations of the Bank of Italy. It is exact, analytically solid and detailed, based on studies and research, its own statistical surveys. And the Governor, Ignazio Visco, is absolutely right in explaining that we need to continue along the straight path of reforms, of recovery, of innovation, traced in the European context. “He is in us”, he finally exhorts.

But this image clashes with what has been happening for days outside the halls of Palazzo Koch, seat of the Bank and of the annual meeting, and which greatly worries him and those who listen to him with attention and approval (as witnessed by the long and unprecedented final applause). On the financial markets, Italy has returned to being a negative protagonist. Enough to fear a new 2011. Now as then for political reasons, yet another confirmation that it is politics that moves the markets, not vice versa.

These same political causes today originate in phenomena that find some place in the analysis of the Bank of Italy when it states that Double-dip recession damage is 'war-like' (the writer underlined this in June 2012) and when he considers the accentuation of social unease, with the doubling of poverty. But in recalling the measures that have recently come into force to combat this poverty, he immediately invites us to "pay attention to the consequences on the public finances" of their possible strengthening.

Here we understand that we haven't understood yet. It has not been understood that the evident improvement in flows (GDP, new employment) is in the face of an enormous stock of social suffering which has become rage against the elite.

Populism is the last stage of the crisis, which started financially and then continued economically.

Those who suffer from poverty, lack of work or the extremely precarious work of young people do not care much (perhaps nothing) about the spread that damages the savings of Italians, because they really have no savings.

We are well aware that the greatest price of an unfortunate exit from the euro and the European Union will be paid precisely by the weakest segments of the population and by the middle class that populist recipes claim to want to help. And precisely because we know it is vital to fill quickly the lack of understanding that the elite has of the real conditions in which a large part of the population finds itself, who therefore votes for the change. The Prime Minister himself, Carlo Cottarelli, would do well to show that he is fully aware of it. With words and deeds.