Enrico Letta appeared to be aware of the difficulties to overcome in order to carry out the task entrusted to him by the President of the Republic and even more of the enormous obstacles that the new Government, once in office, will have to face. And this awareness appears to be a good viaticum for assigning reasonable prospects of success to the "service government" that is about to be born. In fact, the first risk to avoid is that of chasing after the many demands that arise from society and of which the various political forces interpret themselves: in such an acute moment of crisis, the temptation could be to pursue the emergency with buffer measures which, as Tito Boeri rightly observed in Repubblica, would only give the impression of alleviating the evil, but which in reality would do nothing but push us even further down the recessionary spiral.
There are too many questions rising from the country aimed at pushing the government to widen the purse strings in the belief that public spending can create jobs, increase domestic demand, improve the competitiveness of businesses. If we add up all the promises contained in the programs of the two major parties that should form the majority (from the restitution of the IMU, to the refinancing of layoffs, from the reduction of taxes on labour, to the reduction of IRAP) we arrive at at least 20 billion to be found immediately in a budget that is already at the limit and which in any case incorporates the VAT increase in July and that of the TARSU at the end of the year. Where to find this money? no one says it clearly limiting themselves to talking generically about cutting the costs of politics and the fight against tax evasion.
It is therefore evident that the Letta Government program cannot be a simple summation of all the requests of the parties that will support it, but must be based on a more lucid analysis of what needs to be done to restart growth which, moreover, in Italy been missing for over a decade. In this sense, the work done by the essays commissioned by President Napolitano can be a useful cultural track, as well as an operational one. In the first place, it clearly emerges that the two parts of the wise men's work, the institutional and the economic one, are in reality closely intertwined: in fact, the first and most important obstacle to the country's growth is precisely the non-functioning of our political and administrative system. Letta seems to be fully convinced of this, so much so that in his first statements he placed particular emphasis precisely on the necessary constitutional reforms and on the functioning of the Public Administration.
But the economic document of the essays clarifies some other fundamental concepts: 1) development and jobs are not made by governments, which however have a fundamental role in creating the conditions for growth; 2) the protection of savers who own 2/3 of the Italian public debt is fundamental not only from an ethical point of view (it would not be fair to frustrate the savings of Italians) but also convenient from an economic point of view since by lowering the country risk we could benefit from lower interest rates and therefore reactivate the normality of credit to households and businesses; 3) public spending and taxes have already reached the maximum possible levels and therefore it is necessary to continue to operate with the spending review and with the rationalization of public spending to create room for tax cuts.
In summary, it can be said that the document of the wise men identifies a safe road, even if it is warned that it will not be able to give immediate results, to reverse the basic trends of the Italian economy. It passes through important institutional and market reforms, starting with the labor market and ending up with competition in many key sectors such as those of services. In this way, in fact, confidence can be re-established and therefore stimulate a flow of investments both from Italy and from abroad, without which there can be no lasting recovery of development. From this point of view, the document appears a bit reticent on the measures that could shorten the time that passes between the launch of the reforms and their effects on the economy. In fact, an acceleration in the sale of public assets, perhaps through the establishment of a large fund to which ownership of real estate and public shareholdings could pass, could provide that mass of money to be used not to increase current expenditure, but to finance some investments or even better to increase the capital of credit risk insurance funds that already exist or are to be created from scratch, which would have the immediate effect of increasing credit to businesses and therefore immediately removing at least one of the obstacles to recovery, i.e. the severe ongoing credit. After all, it must be said clearly even if Grillo will not like this: without restoring the correct functioning of the banking system, we will not be able to overcome the crisis of our businesses. Europe can help us in this, not so much by loosening the rigor of the public budget, but by completing banking unification and allowing the financing of some investments to virtuous countries, i.e. those with a budget deficit below 3%. just like Italy.
Naturally there are also some emergency measures that must be taken such as the one on the refinancing of the redundancy fund, but one must be aware that everything cannot be done and that priorities must be set. In Germany which had been destroyed by the war, the Germans decided that priority should be given to the reconstruction of the factories and that at a later stage they would think of rebuilding the houses. Similarly, we must concentrate our efforts on restarting the productive machine having as a guide the need to further strengthen the "credibility" that we have begun to recover with the Monti government and without which no development policy will be able to materialize. Unfortunately, many political exponents, starting with Cicchitto on one side and Fassina on the other, do not seem to have thought carefully about what happened in the late spring of 2011, when it was precisely the push from Parliament to expand public spending, which made us lose market confidence on our public bonds by pushing the spread up to 550 points. On the contrary, by initiating those indispensable reforms of both institutions and the PA, we could quickly reverse the expectations of both investors and consumers, anticipating the positive effects of the reforms themselves even before their actual implementation. After all, for too many years Italy has been cut off from large international capital flows and the chances of recovery are enormous. The problem is the timing between the implementation of the reforms and the arrival of the benefits to the citizens. But there are possibilities to minimize them. Enrico Letta certainly possesses the necessary awareness of what needs to be done. Let us hope that he also has the firm determination to implement it without giving in to the demagoguery of easy spending.
