January 2025 will be remembered as the month that shook the world. Especially ours. In ten days everything changed. January 20th arrived. Trump Cyclone, the 24th Monte dei Paschi, the oldest Italian bank has launched an assault on Mediobanca, the temple of finance, and the 27th with DeepSeek la China has thrown down the gauntlet to America onArtificial intelligence. Three tsunamis in one week had never been seen before and since then the world has not been the same, even if many have not yet noticed. It is an unprecedented shock that will have shocking consequences.
The Trump cyclone has erased the America of checks and balances and multilateralism
With Trump's return to the White House, the liberal and democratic America we knew is no more. Trump, as he had promised and/or threatened, has hit the ground running with a shower of decrees that aim to revolutionize the United States. Some will hit their targets, others will not, but two aspects of America will be literally turned upside down. The model of democracy based on a refined balance of checks and balances no longer exists: Trump knows no half measures and in his hands is concentrated an unprecedented power, supported by the techno-billionaires of Silicon Valley who have jumped on the winner's bandwagon in the wake of Elon Musk, the richest man in America, the brilliant businessman but also the most adventurous politician at Donald's court with marked sympathies for the far right. But the other Trumpian upheaval concerns the international scene and affects us closely: with Trump the era of multilateralism ends and also ends the special relationship between the USA and Europe, which Donald detests and hopes to divide. With the Russia and with China there will be a confrontation and we will soon see how it goes for theUkraine.
China's AI Challenge to America Is On
What Trump did not expect is the technological challenge that China has brought to the heart of the American empire on the terrain that most mortgages the future: that of low-cost artificial intelligence where DeepSeek, with little investment, has revealed that the king is naked and that American supremacy in technology is yet to be demonstrated. The game is open and, despite the upheavals of the MY BAG for the American high-tech giants, it is obviously not over in the first round but the Chinese offensive has thrown old American certainties into crisis.
With the Meloni Government as referee and player, the earthquake of Italian capitalism starts
The Trump tsunami and the Chinese challenge on Artificial Intelligence have shaken the entire world and promise or threaten sparks but there is also a tsunami, all Italian, that can upset Italian finance and revolutionize the balance of power of Italian capitalism: it is the takeover that Monte dei Paschi is attempting on Mediobanca with a takeover bid that looks to Generali and that has all the flavour of an anomalous move, more political than financial, that perhaps would not have happened in other countries. Market operation or Palace operation? More the second than the first and not only because the operation is supported by two powerful private shareholders - the Roman builder, publisher and financier Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and the Dolphin of the heirs of Leonardo Del Vecchio – which have a thousand shareholder connections with stakes in MPS but also in Mediobanca and Generali (which is the real objective of the whole battle) and a thousand potential conflicts of interest. But above all because the takeover of Mediobanca, which is the first shareholder of Generali, is a game in which the Meloni government is a referee and a player. An all-Italian anomaly in which the Government is a player in the first person being the first shareholder of Monte dei Paschi but is also an interested referee of the new financial power structure with the endorsement of the takeover bid of the Sienese bank which has the effect of influencing all the shareholders of Mediobanca and Generali who do business with the Government and do not want to antagonize it. So, game over? No, fortunately the market is also in the field with the presence of large international funds both in Mediobanca and in Generali who do not like government interference, distrust those who have conflicts of interest and are used to voting based on the balance sheet results and the credibility of management. The game that will end halfway through the year will certainly be as tough as it is uncertain and, however it ends, Italian financial capitalism will no longer be what it was before. Incredible times, these are the ones we are living in.
