In hindsight, Moody's saves Italy. But Codacons, the primary association of our consumers, denounces the rating agency to the public prosecutor's office. A paradox, but that's exactly how it is. There is, of course, an explanation. The champions of Italian consumerism have taken boos for fiascos. In good company, after all, given what is happening in the upper floors of our government institutions. Of course, even Moody's is no stranger to many suspects: at times a rigorous punisher, often accused of being blind and dumb, if not decidedly blind and fallacious, in the events which then led to small and large crashes. But not this time, definitely not. Moody's has just reserved a further rating downgrade of reference, but in doing so he packaged an even bland, compliant, confident, encouraging x-ray of our country.
The Outlook, i.e. the general medium-long term forecast on the state of health of our economy and therefore of our social fabric, in Moody's judgment earns a "stable": the rubbish rating is close but we still have the margins to push it away. And this is perhaps the most sensitive datum for the financial markets, which, moreover, had already incorporated the rating downgrade as an inevitable consequence of the ominous signs on the current management of our economy which derive from the disconcerting theater provided by politics. So much so that in the morning, just as the diligent Codacons analysts were grappling with the formalization of the complaint to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the financial markets reserved Italy a providential, even if momentary, shot in the arm, with Piazza Affari that took your breath away e the spread in sharp decline.
Italy - Moody's essentially remarks - is a country with good virtues but with bad government attitudes. This time the rating agency is simply right. And it provides us with a balanced, or at least respectable, macro-diagnosis. We are a country with a good industrial fabric, with unchanged genius, with an unbridled initiative, which can count on the attractiveness of our goods and products on international markets. Our company continues to have initiative and flair. Excellent cards to play as soon as politics and international variables allow it to unleash its true strength again. The photograph is that of an economy pushed from below but compressed by its government apparatus. Moreover without a precise route.
How to blame Moody's? How can we fail to recognize a substantial encouragement in his diagnosis of a stable outlook despite the controversial government signals? But no, Codacons says, motivating its attack with its interpretation of the rules, procedures and legitimacy of the prerogatives that belong to the parties involved.
The Codacons claims that Moody's is an illegitimate act "which will have enormous direct repercussions for the pockets of Italian citizens and savers", assumed "before the official pronouncement of the European Union on the Government maneuver" with a timing that "arouses suspicion". Apart from the consideration that a rating agency simply does (and must be able to do) its job, and that in any case the immediate "direct repercussions" of Moody's diagnosis on the markets have been of a diametrically opposite sign (which should lead strategists of the Codacons, moreover returning from many worthy battles, to some reflection on their arguments), it must be said that the Codacons aims even higher. He puts on paper that his announced complaint to the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office is the preparatory step to something else: a class action lawsuit on behalf of consumers. It can be done? Maybe. Naturally it would give visibility to the association even before the necessary boost to our ability to govern the country's difficult moment.
