Italian government bonds are in the storm. In the last three weeks, the spread with the bund has doubled and yields on new issues have risen by one and a half points. Speculators are certainly selling, but above all the big banks, Deutsche Bank in the lead, and many small and medium-sized savers are exiting Italian securities.
The storm quickly spread to the Milan Stock Exchange where banks and insurance companies dominate which have large quantities of Bots in their portfolios and which see the costs of their collection on the market rise frighteningly. We risk entering a negative spiral with a rapid extension of the financial crisis to the real economy with a consequent reduction in both citizens' assets and incomes. And, more seriously, everything seems to take place in the most complete unawareness of the Government, and part of the ruling class, even if just yesterday all the economic categories of both industry and finance, together with the trade unions, finally demanded a change of pace , a discontinuity capable of restoring confidence among domestic and international investors.
It is difficult to say whether this recall will wake the government from its sleeping place. Up until yesterday, the Economy Minister maintained that in reality we are in the midst of a clash between the two shores of the Atlantic, ie between the dollar and the euro, and that therefore Italy alone could have done very little. And it is certainly true that the United States risk default due to the tug of war between the President and Congress on the measures to contain the federal deficit which is now 10% of GDP, that Europe has shown incredible delays in dealing with the Greece and that even the measures adopted at last Thursday's summit appear not yet to be operational and in any case called into question by Germany, whose Finance Minister even wants a partial transfer of sovereignty by countries that may request support measures.
It is therefore true that we are caught in an international storm, but this cannot be the excuse for doing nothing, because in any case there are specific responsibilities on our part if Italy has become the weak link of the European countries and therefore in the area of clash (assuming it is exactly in the terms described by Tremonti) between the dollar and the euro. Surely we can and must do something to protect ourselves from the blows of the international storm. Meanwhile, we need to understand why the emergency maneuver launched two weeks ago and approved by Parliament in record time did not convince the markets and therefore did not stop investors from fleeing Italian securities. The reason lies in the fact that it was a stopgap manoeuvre, with many taxes and few cuts, and above all without any measure capable of restarting the process of developing our GDP without which we will never be able to repay the mountain of our debt .
Giuliano Amato in an interview yesterday on Corriere della Sera he recalls the crisis of '92 which was overcome with the drastic measures adopted by the government he presided over. But forget to mention some important aspects that make the situation then similar to that of today. In the first place, Amato attempted an emergency maneuver in the summer which included the forced withdrawal of bank current account balances (a kind of balance sheet as it is proposed to do today) which was one of the elements that aggravated the markets' distrust towards our currency and led to a loss of reserves by the Bank of Italy of no less than 50 trillion lire in two months. Secondly, Amato then had a weapon that no longer exists today, namely the devaluation of the lira, which allowed the recovery of competitiveness of our productions. Thirdly, the 93 agreement between the social partners definitively buried the escalator and put a brake on trade union claims, thus avoiding the higher imported inflation due to devaluation being passed on to company costs.
If you study the lessons of history well, the reasons that today have brought us to the forefront of suffering the impact of international turbulence and the crisis of confidence that has hit our country appear clearer. We waste too many resources and the Tremonti maneuver does not affect the cuts enough. We have done nothing to stimulate productivity gains. Amato rightly says that we must all work harder to get out of the current crisis. Perhaps more and better could be said, that is, with innovative organizations or by encouraging the movement of workers from places with low productivity to places with higher technology and therefore productivity. But neither was it possible, due to personal spite or ideological resistance, to include in the decree a simple provision which extended "erga omnes" the validity of company contracts approved by the majority of workers.
And today, as everyone knows, productivity gains are made factory by factory and not with national agreements. To be more credible, Confindustria and trade unions, which also call for a discontinuity in economic policy, should say what they are willing to put aside on their plate to change pace. For example, would Confindustria give up part of the public incentives? Would the CGIL be available to discuss innovations capable of increasing labor productivity? Would the merchants be willing to liberalize the opening hours of the shops and not to raise barricades with respect to a greater diffusion of large-scale distribution? And what is the Government waiting for to face the chapter of the so-called costs of politics which actually includes privatizations and liberalizations and above all the simplification and transparency of the political-bureaucratic system which constitutes a heavy "dead hand" which mortifies the spirit of initiative of the Italians?
We are in full emergency. It really scares a prime minister who deals with minor matters, who didn't say a word during the discussion on the Tremonti decree, and who is now preparing to go on vacation while the house risks collapsing at any moment. It would take much more.
We should call all the signatories of the manifesto for discontinuity and understand what they themselves are willing to do. Propose from the government a plan of cuts and liberalizations capable of increasing the competitiveness of the Italian system. Convene Parliament on Saturday and Sunday and propose a programme, not of tears and blood, but of change to promote development. Who could in this context refuse any sacrifice? The fear is that we will once again try to get by with some other patch. But we must remember that old popular saying that often the "patch is worse than the hole".
