Many of the disciplinary knowledge that we have inherited - and that we use - are no longer in good health. We tend to think that they are now irrelevant, above all for their modest interpretative and forecasting abilities. Many of the events that take place, in the economic and social field, increasingly surprise even insiders. The reputation of economists had already been discussed during the great crisis of 1929, discussions which resumed every time they proved incapable of foreseeing crises and of indicating ways to get out of them. The same discussions have involved social scientists on several occasions in recent years. As Ilvo Diamanti observes, with reference to political scientists, this happens "because specialists and professionals and opinion makers themselves tend to confine the micro-social dimension 'outside' politics". Together with concepts such as 'social life' and 'common sense' (…) which interpret social reality as a cognitive construction”.
Even other fields of knowledge, starting with economics, have in fact defined themselves by leaving out dimensions that in reality must be carefully considered if we want to deal with the great problems that our societies have to face. In the debate on Europe taking place in our country, many of the positions and analyzes are influenced by "false truths", and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi has done well in writing a book that tries to clarify to what extent many of the opinions spread among the people - and supported by commentators and authoritative politicians - have a questionable foundation, often expressing only "common sense".
Common sense and good sense are not always in harmony, as Alessandro Manzoni well knew. Everyone remembers the phrases of the Italian writer, phrases that have been taken up by Ilvo Diamanti, Gramsci, Manzoni and my mother-in-law (Il Mulino), and which deserve to be taken up here. There was no shortage of doubts among the people about the significant role of the spreaders in the spread of the plague in Milan - the Italian writer pointed out in his Promessi Sposi - and yet these people did not let their dissent emerge "from vulgar opinion". The latter was too widespread and those who had a different opinion hardly manifested it.
"Common sense was there - writes Manzoni - but it was hidden for fear of common sense". With reference to European issues, it should be noted that the situation appears quite similar to that described by Manzoni, and the effort made by Bini Smaghi to clarify how many of the most widespread and therefore most shared opinions are in reality in need of corrections, being false truths. Bini Smaghi identifies as many as 33 opinions that he believes to be false truths and tries to clarify them, introducing information, data and reasoning that can encourage people's common sense to come forward. His is an effort to have better informed discussions on these topics. Of course we all know that, to divide the people who argue, an important role is played by interests and then by the fact that few are capable of changing their point of view, without feeling diminished.
In many situations – and this is certainly true in our case – it seems easier to think that Italy's difficulties depend on the choices made by other countries and that we have nothing to reproach ourselves for. Naturally in the crisis – both of the Union and of our country – almost none of the various actors is blameless, and yet a balanced analysis must always be made, as proposed by Bini Smagni in his book. Blaming Italy's difficulties on the Euro and Europe or on Globalization should be considered an exercise based largely on common sense and not common sense. Many factors contribute to fueling the first, including the fact that many argue using sentences that are independent of the context in which they were written. Bini Smagni observes - for example - that many of the authoritative criticisms that have been made against the Euro by authoritative economists such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, in reality "are often advanced not to propose the end of the Euro or the exit of some country, but if anything to ask for a faster strengthening of the monetary union with the political union and the completion of the economic union – exactly the opposite of those who ask for the end of the euro”. Even Nouriel Roubini in one of his recent essays wrote that "the monetary union remains in an unstable equilibrium: either the euro area moves towards full integration (framed in a political union to give democratic legitimacy to the loss of sovereignty on banking, fiscal and economic matters) or will undergo a process of disunity, disintegration, fragmentation and eventually rupture".
Furthermore, common sense is artfully nourished not only by partial quotations, but by unfaithful translations, as happened with a passage by the Cypriot economist Christopher Pisarrides. These intervened - recalls Bini Smaghi - arguing not the need for the end of the euro but that we were faced with a radical choice: "Either the countries that lead the euro take action as soon as possible to make the euro a factor of promoting growth and employment or the euro must be dissolved in an orderly manner”.
The whole enterprise of building Europe, as those who had begun it well knew and as Tommaso Padoan-Schioppa insistently repeated in his writings – a witness and protagonist of this enterprise – had this character for the simple reason that it set out to accomplish a goal that had no historical precedent, by prompting Europeans to venture into little-explored terrain. Even the adventure of the euro has this character, being "the first currency freed not only from its peg to gold but also from its peg to the state"3.
In monetary terms, the euro, created in January 1999, was an act put in place to overcome a paradigm in use that was a source of trouble. With this decision it was acknowledged that free trade, capital mobility, fixed exchange rates and the autonomy of monetary policies cannot be reconciled with each other and a currency was created to abandon the paradigm of the "irreconcilable quartet" and to overcome the hegemony of the mark. Romano Prodi returns to all these questions – in his interview that opens the latest issue of Limes and which is entitled Why Europe and Italy no longer work, clarifying that “the Euro is not, as is commonly said, a project of bankers.
'It is the most innovative political idea since the foundation of the European Union: the great and irreversible decision to unite Europeans in a single political entity starting from the currency. (…) Since then the need to accompany the single currency with other fiscal and economic decisions. (…) The process was conceived as irreversible and had to achieve complete economic integration, not just monetary”. For Prodi "the common currency was not a shortcut but the most realistic project that could be undertaken" at that moment. If the first system was to be considered imperfect, so was the new one, as Prodi recalls, and there was awareness of this.
The crisis has amply shown that - the president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi repeats insistently - the Union, in order to get out of the crisis, needs to use all the tools that the States have, namely budgetary, structural, monetary and fiscal ones. Things that are not done because there is a lack of will and community tools. Naturally, the crisis has done something positive, pushing forward the process of building a new European institutional architecture capable of responding better to the governance needs of the ongoing processes, but I know of a path that is still modest, compared to the needs . It should also be remembered that there has been a lack of action to support demand by those countries which, like Germany, were and are able to do so.
Since there are no reference models and useful maps to use, serious mistakes have been made, and the serious crisis that has hit the world economy, and especially the advanced countries in particular, has certainly contributed to making the situation more dramatic. This crisis was certainly not foreseen by observers and research centres.
This lack of understanding of the extent of the crisis has made all the mistakes made very costly and the costs caused by the delay in intervening have been particularly high. The latter could instead be less, if the Union had been capable of more timely interventions and if it had maintained a far-sighted vision. Among the non-economic costs there is the growth in the European political arena of anti-euro and anti-euro parties and movements -Union. Without obviously neglecting the fact that positions of this type have grown even within traditional parties. This changed attitude is confirmed by the periodic surveys which are carried out and published by the Eurobarometer on the European guidelines existing in the single States.
Indeed, a comparative reading of these periodic surveys indicates that in recent years, starting from 2008, the trust of Europeans in the Union has been declining rapidly, and that today only in seven of the Union countries does the majority of citizens continue to have faith in the Union. Of course, confidence in the Euro has also dropped significantly, and the same is happening with reference to the main European institutions. The loss of European citizens' trust in the Union is a serious matter and is particularly dangerous when it affects the euro and the Central Bank. No currency and no bank can play their role well if they do not have the trust of citizens, consumers and investors who are in the European and international economic arena.
All social systems need this "lubricant" to function, to quote a term used by Arrow, a very convinced scholar of the great economic and political advantages that come from the existence of trust or when it is possible to restore it, if it has minus8. The prevalence of the "short view" in Europe is therefore causing a crisis which, starting from the economy, is also having repercussions on politics, a crisis which has not only economic but cultural origins. "A trap" has been created (as Gianfranco Viesti puts it), a perverse, circular and cumulative mechanism has been created - to instead take up a category dear to Gunnar Mirdal and which perhaps helps to better understand what is happening and the ways to get out of it- which depresses the economy as it renounces to use all the economic potential that exists in the Union, at the same time calling into question the complicated and tiring construction process that has begun and the social balances that exist in the different countries. Getting out of a trap or a cumulative circular mechanism it is always difficult, above all when there are some countries (particularly Germany) which continue to gain from this situation (even if the latest data show that these are decreasing) and when the cultural differences play an important role in the game exist across countries. What makes it difficult to launch strategies capable of breaking this vicious circle is the fact that there is widespread common sense and that it prevents so much from putting their common sense into play. The common sense that dominates instead pushes us to accept false truths and collective lies, put in place by those who have interests to protect, as is the case in Germany. It is therefore a question of fighting against substantial interests but a common sense that feeds a political conformity and the "spiral of silence" that exists in many places.
The debate on how to save Europe is naturally broad, and there are so many suggested strategies that we certainly cannot resume or summarize them here, needing a space that is not available here. It is advisable to refer to the many books and studies in circulation, suggesting, however, that those analyzes that go beyond their disciplinary boundaries and that are attentive to the circular and cumulative processes that are created always and above all when one tries to follow unknown tracks, are to advantage. The construction of Europe has required and continues to require leading groups capable of positively managing the inevitable imbalances that arise in the economic and political fields. In fact, in these paths it is above all the imbalances that can serve as fuel to overcome the resistances and inertial forces that exist.
This has happened in the past, the story of the Union tells, but this by no means means that it will happen all the time and then again. The only way out of the trap in which the European Union is entangled is by recreating a climate of trust, a lubricant that can only be obtained when one manages to overcome short-sightedness and short-sightedness, as Padoa-Schioppa invited. A greater clarity in the gaze will only be achieved when the space for the false truths and the many lies that are in circulation and that prevent us from seeing that the responsibility for the current difficulties is collective.
Germany shouldn't aspire to create a German Europe, and not only because of the very high costs that this project has for the weaker countries, but for those who are determined in the European political arena. The invitation made by Angelo Bolaffi to the Germans to use their hegemony in a wise and farsighted way deserves to be heard in that country, as must also be accepted the invitation made by Bini Smaghi to the Italian public opinion not to believe the many false truths they are out and about doing the things it takes to count again and more in the European decision-making process. Ultimately, the new scenarios of Europe and its currency will depend on the ability of peoples and national governments to recreate a climate of trust that leads to work to increase integration and cooperation between countries and European institutions.
We should not give up and face the situation courageously, knowing that any return to the past is impossible, given the processes of globalization and the new divisions of labor that have arisen in the world.
Even in the field of politics, the national dimensions have now become completely anachronistic with respect to the problems that have to be faced.
