The spending review commissioner, Carlo Cottarelli, is ready to resign from his post. Yesterday he denounced the tendency of political power to use spending savings not to reduce taxes but to finance new expenses. The Treasury has tried to throw water on the fire by arguing that Cottarelli was referring to Parliament rather than the Government, but the lack of harmony between the commissioner and the prime minister suggests that a divorce will soon be reached.
Without equivocations and without overlapping with the Treasury, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is on the other hand about to set up a think tank of economists at Palazzo Chigi which should support him both in the European semester of the Italian presidency and in imagining the government's economic policy.
Roberto Perotti of the Bocconi University, Tommaso Nannicini, also of Bocconi, Marco Fortis, president of the Edison Foundation and professor of industrial economics at the Cattolica in Milan, Veronica De Romanis, an economist formerly Tesoro with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and author of a brilliant counter-current book on Merkel's Germany as well as collaborator of FIRSTonline, Marco Simoni of the London School of Economics, Yoram Gutgeld, Renzi deputy of Israeli origin and former director of McKinsey and Filippo Taddei, economic adviser of the Pd wanted by Renzi and professor at John Hopkins University.
However, last-minute new entries are not excluded.
