Is the glass half empty or half full? After Berlusconi's speech in Parliament and today's meeting with the social partners, the markets believe that the glass is half empty, while the government insists that it is half full and that the markets don't understand it.
If someone had the illusion that those strong signs of turning point that hadn't come yesterday from the Prime Minister's speech, would have arrived today after the meeting with the social partners, they will have to think again. Berlusconi continues to refuse to acknowledge the markets' rejection of his policy. Again this morning he repeated to the social partners that his government has done a lot in recent years, that the crisis is in reality international and European in particular and that therefore the real solution can only be sought in those fora. Tremonti repeated that growth depends on many general conditions and cannot be done by decree.
Little or nothing has been said about Italy's dramatic loss of competitiveness, whose production loses momentum in exports, about the political-administrative chaos that discourages investments, about the hypertrophy of our institutional system that produces much talk and few concrete facts. On the contrary, during the meeting, Berlusconi once again complained of the scarce powers available to the Prime Minister, whose decisions can be rejected or overturned by the Quirinale, the Constitutional Court, the Regions, Parliament, and individual magistrates. In short, we are paralysed. For the moment, therefore, the card of some measure capable of modifying the market's expectations regarding Italy's ability to return to a higher growth rate in the next few years is not being played.
To the six points of the reform agenda presented by the social partners, the government has added two and it was agreed on the need to immediately start studying concrete forms of intervention in order to launch the relative provisions as early as the very first days of September. Among these points stands out the opportunity to launch a constitutional amendment to make it mandatory to balance the budget, as suggested by sen. Nicholas Rossi; the use of the tax and social security delegation in order to make those cuts in expenses and that reorganization of the tax authorities which can allow, without an increase in the tax burden, a visible lightening of the burdens on work and businesses; and finally the launch of a new work statute which integrates and partially replaces the workers' statute which is now forty years old and proves it all.
Furthermore, it is necessary to go through the cutting of the costs of politics, even beyond what Berlusconi said yesterday in the Chambers, by an effective relaunch of the infrastructures done through the reform of the regulations which block the execution of every major work and not only with the 'announcement effect of the various billions mangled by the Cipe which then never turn into effective expenditure and finally the liberalizations and privatizations, on which the CGIL does not seem to agree at all.
Fiscal reform and the labor statute, which contains a reform of industrial relations, appear to be the two fundamental points for restoring competitiveness to the country. We've been talking about it for years. Is it possible that the Government has not yet studied anything concrete? Or has the government so far lacked the strength to tackle difficult reforms that can annoy even groups of its own constituents or segments of Berlusconi's colorful galaxy? Are we moving with caution to seek the cover of social forces and, at least in part, of the opposition? But will the markets allow enough time for the Byzantine rites of our political system to unfold?
There is a lack of trust in Italy and its political system. The loss of personal credibility of the Prime Minister and many of his ministers, starting with Tremonti and ending with the new Minister of Agriculture, is concrete and palpable among the thousands of operators who have to decide whether and how much to invest in Italian securities. Of course, perhaps it is also true that when distrust and fear spreads, the decisions of savers and fund managers can lead to exaggerations. Today many run to buy Swiss Francs that yield zero, or gold at a stratospheric price. But to convince them to backtrack, concrete acts are needed, not study commissions.
Today, immediate action is required to block the spiral of distrust, preventing the financial crisis from being transferred to the real economy through the increase in interest rates and the scarcity of credit. The Pact for Italy between the Government and the social partners may be useful, but why wait for September? Perhaps it would be better to work day and night from the start and launch a complete package of measures to reassure operators as early as next week. And then we'll see if the oppositions that the social partners also meet this afternoon will continue to place a prejudicial policy or agree to launch a maneuver to secure the fragile Italian ship.
In their tour de force the social partners will also meet the new PDL secretary Angelino Alfano in the evening who proudly defended the primacy of politics over the markets which, in his opinion, cannot bring about a change of government. Perhaps Alfano has not reflected sufficiently on the fact that the markets, which work every day, have the possibility of signaling, sooner than the voters can do, the shortcomings of a certain political approach and "vote with their legs", i.e. they turn their backs on confused and inefficient governments. Perhaps Alfano longs for the era of closed markets, when the export of capital was punished with the death penalty, and when governments could impose all sorts of penalties on their citizens. The markets are an expression of freedom and a party called Popolo delle Libertà should know this better than anyone else.
