The first signal had been seen on the clumsy one dignity decree signed by Di Maio, otherwise renamed unemployment decree, with the anti-company squeeze on employment contracts which, instead of really fighting the precariousness, risks causing 80 more unemployed and which has already sparked the revolt of companies especially in the North-East. But then came the confirmation on Ilva, on the Tav, on Alitalia, on Cassa depositi e prestiti (Cdp) and, most recently, on the cut in pensions from 4 euros upwards for public managers and professionals.
The more days go by, the clearer it is where the perverse division of labor between Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio leads, between Alloy and Five Stars movement in that strange government relationship that has never been and never will be a love marriage but a relationship of convenience, or if you prefer of power, Yes of course.
DIGNITY DECREE
Salvini, who has more personality and more political experience than Di Maio, makes good and bad weather on the hot topics of immigration and security but on the economy and social policy, the League is clearly in tow of populism with the clams of the Five Stars. Di Maio has imposed his anti-industrial line in the labor decree even at the cost of disappointing the entrepreneurs of the North-East who sooner or later, living off exports, will have to ask themselves how convenient it is to invest in a government that never manages to erase the his endemic idiosyncrasy for the euro and for Europe.
TAV AND TAP
One can imagine with how much joy the small Lombard or Venetian entrepreneurs who have bet on Salvini have witnessed the pickaxes joint to the Jobs Act launched by Di Maio and Susanna Camusso's CGIL. But then the infrastructure dossier was opened. It is true that in the face of the ideological prejudices and hesitations of the Five Stars in the face of major works, Salvini raised his voice reminding his allies that Tav and Tap they have to be done, but who would swear on the real completion of the high-speed train between Turin and Lyon?
ILVA
Thirdly, the chapter has opened Ilva, the largest steel plant in Europe which employs and induced 20 workers and for whose relaunch the previous government had found, not as contemptuously argued by Di Maio, "the first that passes on the street" but the largest global steel group, such as Arcelor-Mittal which has undertaken to reclaim the area and make investments to relaunch the Taranto plant.
The Deputy Prime Minister Grillino he's doing everything to blow up this deal, which is wrong to have been signed by a Pd-led government, even at the cost of very high penalties that the state would have to pay to the Indians, who are waiting for nothing else. But so far the League's voice in defense of a steel plant that is crucial for steel supplies to all Italian industry has not been heard. Yet we are on the brink of the largest industrial Caporetto that a government risks ingloriously owning itself.
ALITALIA
But what about Alitalia and Cassa depositi e prestiti? Here the League does not appear dominated but complicit in the adventurous plans of the Grillo. Italian taxpayers know to their cost how much the repeated public or falsely private bailouts of theAlitalia but the ineffable Grillino minister of Transport, Danilo Toninelli, was very clear in his support for the return of the airline to public hands which, due to its high fixed costs and its increasingly reduced range, would not be able to reach a balanced budget not even by completely filling its planes, as demonstrated, numbers in hand, by an expert of the caliber of Professor Riccardo Gallo right on FIRSTonline.
DEPOSITS AND LOANS CASH
Toninelli's plans, in which the League appears to take a hand, are not very clear but there is more than one indication that, to save Alitalia, the grillino minister intends to call for assistance and therefore to put the State Railways or the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. What a masterpiece of stupidity! But what does the League do? He agrees and deludes himself that the Cdp, that little treasure due to the creativity of Giulio Tremonti and the shrewd work of presidents like Franco Bassanini first and Claudio Costamagna later, is a bottomless pit with the risk of derailing it towards improper shores such as the transformation into bank (subject to the vigilant supervision of the ECB) or, worse, to bring it back within the perimeter of the PA with lethal effects for the public debt?
THE CUT OF GOLDEN PENSIONS
The last case that reveals the surprising hegemony of the Five Stars over social policies in defiance of the League is that of the adventurous project of cut pensions exceeding 4 euros per month to finance minimum and social pensions. Another case of populism with clams which, out of amateurism and rancorous justicialism, risks causing enormous damage not only to the retirees targeted but to social cohesion and the credibility of the state.
The controversial bill presented to the Chamber by the Lega and Cinque Stelle has very good chances of producing results opposite to those imagined: not only because the resources that would be collected would not be enough to finance the increase in minimum and social pensions but because - this is the most serious point - the acquired rights would be shamelessly questioned, now of a restricted category of pensioners and who knows tomorrow, with arbitrary and retroactive interventions that undermine the certainties of citizens and that clearly smell of unconstitutionality. The League is lucky enough to have among its ranks a great pension expert like Alberto Brambilla, who in fact has completely different ideas on the subject: what are you waiting for to dissociate yourself from such a rash project?
THE MANEUVER AND THE DANGER OF THE MARKETS
Salvini can also make the ducetto on immigrants and security - and here too sooner or later we will have to compare the proclamations with the real results because in two months there were only 866 real repatriations! – But on the economy and social policies he risks paying a very high price for the populism of the Five Stars. The litmus test is near and will arrive in September with the budget maneuver. And if Salvini's right-hand man, the powerful undersecretary Giancarlo Giorgetti, one of the few who calls you the president of the ECB Mario Draghi, warns that the storm of the markets could soon unleash on Italy there will be a reason. Not because there are really conspiracies coming but because the yellow-green government seems to be a master of own goals and, if you don't respect the budget constraints, the markets, in this case yes, won't forgive you.
