We tried to translate this singular Anglo-Saxon expression into Italian: muddling through. Expression that we read in a comment, published on December 9, that is, before the closure of the agreement with 26 countries which allowed the European Union to take a small step forward, "but sideways". As Giuliano Amato wrote in the Sole 24 Ore on 11 December, to comment, in fact, on the agreement between the European countries from which the British premier, David Cameron, has opted out.
The comment in which this singular expression appears, which the slang of social sciences associates with the theory of limited rationality proposed by the Nobel Prize Herbert Simon, was written by Barry Eichengreen on Project Syndicate and has a very eloquent title: "Disaster can wait" . The object of the comment is the economic and financial situation of the global market and the judgment refers to both sides of the advanced countries which are at the center of that situation: Europe and the United States.
The slang term used by Eichengreen has attracted the attention of the writer due to its ambiguous nature, it is no coincidence that it is associated with an oxymoron, but also due to its strange coincidence with the set of comments that the Italian newspapers presented on Sunday 11 December, on the effects and consequences of the agreement with 26 countries, with which a very delicate phase of the balance between the European governments was closed and a medium-term plan was launched on the content of which, as we have already said, we share the judgment of Giuliano Amato: “Europe advances almost always choosing the wrong path, after carefully discarding the best ones.
But, even if it is sideways, it advances”. The first feeling, reading the agreement, had been darker, to be honest. However, reading Amato's commentary, in parallel with other opinions very different from his own, and arriving, lastly, at the fact that a great American economist was able to affirm, after a long cannonade against the unreliable beliefs and the very questionable choices of the class European leader – politicians or economists who are its components – that the disaster, under certain conditions which also depend on chance and luck, could be avoided in 2012, the expression Muddling Through seemed to us almost a sign of destiny: a light that opened up in the darkness of the confusion of ideas and of the controversial therapy that is following a diagnosis that would have deserved better and more shared therapies, both in Europe, between very different national and social groups and interests, and in the world between the USA and the European Union.
In short, this is not yet an optimistic statement but the perception that, if we don't exaggerate in the exasperation of contrasts, this time too, perhaps, we will come out battered but still healthy. And let's get to the internal comparison of opinions and possible strategies within our domestic market. Symmetrically to Giuliano Amato's pessimism of reason, the opinions of the founder of that newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, can be read in La Repubblica (December 11, 2011). In Scalfari's article the optimism of the will and the enthusiasm of the partisan are wasted. Scalfari writes that the two Marios, Monti and Draghi, saved Europe but emphatically recounts Mario Draghi's choices, and above all the consequences of these choices: allowing us to glimpse that, despite a branch within the European Central Bank itself, the Draghi's expansive monetary policy will also be able to revive the credit crunch that had reduced lending to businesses.
At the same time - thanks to the agreement signed by the 26 countries, the ECB manages the Fund to save States and the future, and the close process of integration between the Fund, provisional and experimental, and its definitive confluence into the ESM - it should become even more governable the process of stabilizing prices and interest rates on the European government bond market. In short, between the two Marios, Scalfari seems to choose Draghi's economic consequences with enthusiasm and this obviously finds us in favour, but he proposes, at the end of his editorial, a singular consideration on Mario Monti: "We now expect from the Monti government that - after the stamp of rigor that has recovered our credibility in international fora – we move as quickly as possible to measures to stimulate demand in the sectors of consumption, infrastructure, the tax wedge between gross salary and net payroll. This is the decisive appointment. So far Monti has left us speechless. We understood why, but it can only allow for a delay of two or three weeks. After the holidays (which won't be too festive) there won't be room for further delays. This time it's up to Passera and Barca. Let's hope they don't disappoint us."
This cannot be considered a hostile criticism but it is certainly a severe lecture on the Monti government and its president. In short, Scalfari presents a strange asymmetry between the optimism of the title, with which his editorial is proposed, and the evident diversity that circulates between the economic consequences of the respective behaviors of Monti and Draghi. And in fact, concluding the small review of the opinions in the field, if you read the pages of the Corriere della Sera (11 December 2011) you notice two specific criticisms of the Government: for its economic policy, too rigorous and still too silent on the measures to give breath to growth, once understood that the rigor, however, will depress it during 2012; but also to the relationship between the Government and the Parliament and, secondly and necessary, with the parties that are present in that Parliament through their representatives.
Alesina & Giavazzi return to the government's fiscal measures and promptly explain where the shadows of the maneuver lurk. But also the hearing of the governor Ignazio Visco in Parliament presents a worrying fact. A table in which we read (Table 7) that for 2012 the net change in revenues is close to 18 billion euros while the cut in expenses is just over 2 billion euros. A truly recessive composition of the relationship between levy, higher revenues, and reduction of expenditure, lower expenditures. The imbalance improves in the following two years but, in 2014, we are still experiencing higher revenues of 12 billion euros and lower expenditures of 9 billion euros: the figure is less unbalanced but still prevailing as to what is deprived of the spending capacity of consumers and businesses compared to what is cut in the redundant dimension of national public spending. Giuseppe Bedeschi writes on the relationship between Parliament, the Government and the parties, again in the Corriere della Sera (November 11, 2011).
By addressing the theme of the formation of a self-contained political class from a perspective of historical analysis. And thus offering a notion that is not phenomenological and contingent, the "caste" that opposes the real country, but rather a structural interpretation of a modification of the composition of Italian society. A modification that sees an "extinct race", men like De Gasperi and Malfa, and the appearance of men who "promise everything to everyone...without taking into account the interests of the country". In short, there is a perceived fragility of the relationship of representation between the country and Parliament which fuels risks and dangers in the relationship between Parliament and the Government at a time when the manoeuvre, and the further and necessary manoeuvres, to balance the cleaver of rigor, will have to be deliberated precisely in Parliament.
The Government should take this into account and try to refine the language and content of the measures to be announced to the country, as is the case in Europe. Where, according to Amato's prudent expression, one advances sideways but one advances. Let's try, in Italy, not to derail, not to get off the track of consensus that should guide those who govern in the shared space of acceptable results from the real country. After all, this too is the challenge facing the current government: going through its domestic Muddling Through.
