“I admit it: I'm in bad faith, I'm ignorant and by professing the anti€ I earn money in spades! Happy?”. Sic twittit Antonio Maria Rinaldi, 58 years old, true Roman, son of the former banker Rodolfo Rinaldi, former vice president of BNL and last president of Banco di Santo Spirito before the merger with Cassa di Risparmio di Roma, as well as a man very close to Giulio Andreotti.
The "Bell'Antonio", one meter eighty-five of pure Romaccia sympathy, residing in a luxurious estate in Monte Mario, pretends to be an economist to earn a living. But he has no scientific publications among his records: to his credit, only two pamphlets against the euro - published by a low-cost publisher and distributed on newsstands - and a few years as general manager of Sofid, the financial parent company of ENI , after a period in Consob. He is one of those children of the Roman generone who don't need to be acclaimed in the scientific environment.
It is enough for him to accredit himself as a disciple of Paolo Savona, he is a high-ranking economist and former minister. Antonio instead brandishes the belly of a hopelessly anti-European niche that wants to return to the lira. He agitates the television studios with Roman centurion tones that bring down the stands, when he thrusts in one of his effective jabs against the Euro, Mario Monti and the Stability Pact.
He began to raise his voice a couple of years ago, with a monster reduction plan of the stock of public debt for an amount of about 400 billion euros: pure science fiction, according to privatization experts. Packaged proposal for the demagogue on duty and punctually endorsed by Renato Brunetta during the election campaign. He teaches International Economics at the Link Campus University in Rome, a private degree factory – first Maltese now Italian – chaired by former minister Vincenzo Scotti, who obtained the equivalent status of the university, look at it, while he was undersecretary for foreign affairs during the last Berlusconi government.
Valuable intervention, the decree signed by the then minister Gelmini certifying the full "recognition of the Link Campus as a non-state university of the Italian university system", considering the fact that several public administration managers had previously presented the qualifications obtained at the university located in via Nomentana when they were not yet treated according to Italian legislation, arousing the attention of the judiciary for bankruptcy irregularities.
Rinaldi also teaches a course in corporate finance at the Gabriele D'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, by strange coincidence the very same university where his brother, Alessandro, financier and husband of Maria Laura Garofalo, rich heiress of the empire also teaches of clinics founded by the surgeon-entrepreneur Raffaele Garofalo, once close to the Communist Party.
Today the Garofalos are also owners of several residential complexes and of a local radio station, Radio Ies, where Antonio conducted thirty minutes of fire against the single currency. But it was while teaching in Pescara that he formed a partnership – under the banner of firm opposition to the single currency – with Alberto Bagnai, author, needless to do it on purpose, of the essay "The sunset of the Euro: how and why the end of the single currency it would save democracy and well-being in Europe”. And since all good things come in threes, another standard bearer of anti-Europeanism could not be missing: Claudio Borghi, a columnist for the Giornale and professor at the Cattolica. Ready, set, go, and here the anti-euro trio doesn't miss a beat to launch the assault on the single currency and dismantle the European architecture piece by piece: regain possession of monetary sovereignty, devalue a new rampant Lira by 20-30% and fear passes.
To begin with – Rinaldi loudly argues with his followers – the Fiscal Compact is illegitimate. He supports the thesis of the 2012-year-old jurist Giuseppe Guarino, who in XNUMX attacked the structure of the new European economic governance from the pages of the Foglio. Thesis, however, not supported by a serious analysis of the treaties and disassembled, always on the Sheet, by Ornella Porchia, professor of European Union law in Turin. Strange character, Rinaldi: first he earns some newspaper headlines with his theoretical plan of asset sales to reduce debt, then he changes his mind and proposes to leave the EU to regain control of the central bank and also monetize almsgiving to traffic lights, in order to avoid the recovery of the accounts. On the other hand, those who have lived in the shadow of the powerful skilfully carving out their own space in public strongholds, at a rough guess, have no interest in pursuing "structural reforms".
The three, however, do not miss an opportunity: from the "No Euro Day" of the new Northern League by Salvini to the numerous conferences promoted - among others - also by 5 Star deputies, without forgetting television grandstands conducted by prone and compliant journalists, such as in the case of "La Gabbia" by Gianluigi Paragone, every stage is good to make converts. Rinaldi never tires of reminding him: “I'm apolitical, I don't belong to a party but I talk to anyone to inform people about the unsustainability of the single currency. I'm not a parlor economist but in the morning I buy milk at the grocery store and I realize, unlike the technicians, how people live".
He never fails to show off, wherever he goes, his cufflinks, which he wears on his shirt cuffs, depicting the old and faded national uniform. Rinaldi is so apolitical that he even granted several interviews on the PDL website, in one of which, before the elections last February, he described Silvio Berlusconi as a leader illegitimately ousted by the Troika. He hustlers galore. But the big coup, the three musketeers of the new lira, did it last December 3, when they spoke directly to the European Parliament during a conference organized and promoted by Magdi Cristiano Allam, European parliamentarian and president of the political movement "I love the 'Italia” as well as former deputy director ad personam of Corriere della Sera. At the meeting, with the title that says it all – “Die for the Euro?” – the worst of centrifugal nationalism presented itself, famously led by the progenitor of the Eurosceptic howlers: Nigel Farage, battering ram of UKIP, the independence party of the United Kingdom.
Why does a taxpayer-funded university choose to give space to two anti-euro professors, one of whom (Rinaldi) does not have a curriculum as an academic researcher but has a brother in the same university? Where do these three knights of autarchy, headed by a former executive who came to prominence (and soon faded) between the first and second republics, want to go?* Today, there does not seem to be any well-defined project. Making caciara (and grana), as they say in Rome, could be Rinaldi's only true goal, who on December 18 was in the square with the Pitchforks and does not deny himself to anyone: the motto is "provided they talk about it" . And he starts talking about it. Even his presence on the internet is becoming very respectable.
Fans on twitter are growing, while on Facebook he accepts any friendship in order to spread the anti-euro word. Whether there is a project, in view of the spring European elections, is not clear, but it is certain that the three are trying to gather under the same umbrella, at the continental level, the confused and heterogeneous anti-European party, which for now has as its voice " official" the "Manifesto for European Solidarity", a document signed by twenty economists, in which it is stated that "a controlled exit (from the Eurozone) of the most competitive countries such as Germany, Holland, Finland, is in the interest of the countries of the South, since a similar solution would offer the best chance of saving the European Union and the common market”.
Meanwhile Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, has already been immortalized while Magdi Allam was handing him the latest copy of Rinaldi's latest essay, “Europa Kaputt”.
*article modified at the express request of Dr. Claudio Borghi, who felt injured where the original text recited the following text: "where do these three knights of autarchy want to go, grown up in the shadow of the entrepreneurial state, arriving to cover positions highly respected executives between the first and second republics, well placed in the circle that counts, is it to be suspected also by dynastic means? The author wishes to apologize for any misunderstandings related to the construction of the period, at the same time pointing out its non-centrality in the context of the article.
