In a short time, in application of the spoil system (an elegant translation into English of the better known and homemade Cencelli manual), the new owner of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) prof. Giovanni Tria will have to nominate a large number (200?) of new members, whether the grillini like it or not, of the much reviled "caste" already working in the ministry of economy and finance.
In particular, the minister will have to appoint the new Director of the Treasury Department (formerly DGT-General Directorate of the Treasury which was headed, among others, by Mario Sarcinelli and Mario Draghi). The most important competencies of this department are by provision of the law; a) the monitoring and management of shareholdings held by the Ministry, the exercise of shareholder rights in companies also listed on regulated markets. b) the task of issuing Government Bonds and managing the liabilities of the Central Administration. In other words, the management of the public debt held (as private wealth) in the hands of those who have trusted the Italian state.
In the first case, it is a question of appointing the members of the Board of Directors called to manage the majority/controlling interests of listed companies, including: ENAV (53,28%); ENEL(23,58%); ENI (4,34%, plus CDP at 25,76%); Leonardo (30,20%); Monte dei Paschi di Siena (68,25%); Poste Italiane (29,26%). To these must be added approximately another 25 unlisted companies, among which the best known, discussed and sought-after are, as is known, RAI, CDP-Cassa depositi e prestiti, CONSIP. They are all companies that move colossal interests outside their domestic and international spheres, above all in the sector of procurement and the choice of suppliers: both often withdrawn from competition in favor of direct call contracts and not with competitive auction mechanisms.
The transparency invoked in the electoral campaign and implemented in the government contract will therefore have to develop everywhere with the opposition of many and in spite of all. In any case of spoil system (see Cencelli), the moral, professional qualities and independence of judgment of the new entrants into the new "caste" will guide the political judgment on the action of the Minister of Economy. In the case of new entries in listed companies, it is hoped that they will not "chirp" in open markets and will be able to observe the most rigorous silence regarding the price sensitive news of which they will become aware.
In the second case, the Treasury Department's expertise in public debt management (i.e. private wealth held by savers, if anything through financial intermediaries) are at the heart, much more than in the first case, of the economic and international policy they intend to develop the new Minister and his new head of the Department responsible for the "Public Debt" Directorate. The task of the latter is to issue Government Bonds and manage the liabilities of the Central Administration. In other words, it is a question of managing the stock of Italian public debt of around 2300 trillion euros still in the hands of savers today: a figure far more evocative of complex fiduciary management techniques than the aseptic Debt to GDP ratio.
In these stormy times, the state of saver confidence must be preserved in order not to oppose the extremely delicate commitment of the Treasury in extending the maturities of government bonds. The shortening of which is instead eagerly awaited by speculators who have their eye on the renewals and maturities of public bonds.
Valuable for the knowledge of the problems mentioned is the latest report on the state of the Italian public debt prepared and made available on the web by upB - parliamentary budget office, where it is recalled that the lengthening of debt maturities is a historical objective of the Treasury. The duration was 3,3 years in 1993, rose to 5,8 in 2000, and 7,1 in 2010, but approximately 6 years from 2010 to 2014, to then recover in the following three years up to 6,8 years in 2017 , just below the 2010 peak.
As the PBO report also notes, since the Treasury will have to place around 2018 billion of securities a year during 2019-380, the probable closure of the QE envisages a necessary increase in the net absorption of new government bond issues from part of private investors. Net of the QE operations, the refinancing of medium and long-term securities with private individuals will go from 165 billion in 2017 to 201 billion in 2019.
These data require that the spoils system applied to the head of the Treasury Department must find confirmation in what Minister Tria declared in his first interview with Corriere della Sera “the government's position is clear and unanimous. No intention to leave the euro is under discussion”.
So let the neo-minister of the economy and the garrulous diarchs of the yellow-green political coalition think carefully about it: avoid appointing someone lacking in high technical knowledge, who has past and not dormant propensities to leave the euro; if anything devoted to writings in transduce anti-euro in some confidential report, such as the one drawn up at the time by Mediobanca by Dr. Antonio Guiglielmi, or in the drafts of a book much cited but not yet published; still subject to the allure of extraordinary interventions on the debt stock; still proud and mindful of what some words "from the sen escaped" in the past.
The minister must not forget that in the management of the public debt not only words are stones: but also the final acts of the spoil system are stones that can affect savers' confidence; favor the gluttony of financial speculation in general and of hedge funds in particular, constantly waiting for some misstep on the provision of liquidity necessary for the general treasury of the state.
