If Italy risks balkanization

From the end of June to the end of September the overall index of Italian shares fell 25.3% compared with the 16.1% for Spanish shares. In the same time period, the index for the banking sector fell in Italy 31.7% compared with 19.2% in Spain. In the meantime the spread between the Republic of Italy and Germany went from 185 to 377 basis points, overtaking on the bend Spain by some 40 basis points due to a decisive push from the serious loss of credibility in the political class in general and in the Government in particular. The three notch downgrade of the Italy decided yesterday by Moody's expresses a very serious assessment and confirms how delicate the situation is. This is the only reason why we asked the Finance Minister and then the Prime Minister to search their souls and to draw their own conclusions, considering in their decisions the price that the Country is paying in terms of violated decorum of its institutions.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, political with this position, but rather a full awareness of an assessment by markets that day after day becomes more and more concerning. No one (at home and abroad) can place doubts on the fact that Italian banks are more solid and productive than Spanish ones. Just like no one, in good faith, can say that our fundamentals are weaker than theirs: except for public debt, all parameters are clearly in our favor in terms of deficit/GDP, household and corporate debt.

This is probably how things had to go, but it would have been better if the virus of Balkanization of politics did not infect also the corporate world, almost a sort of "mandrakiness" (n.d.t. a person who thinks he has magical powers like Mandrake the magician), because when a house is burning down the first thing that has to be done is to put out the fire, not create other breeding grounds. The main shareholder of this newspaper is Confindustria, an association that represents Italian businesses and exercises its role of publisher in a modern and liberal way for the simple reason that every four years it changes its head and guarantees with its behavior the autonomy of the top editors and the newsroom. For this reason we can (and want) to say clearly that also Confindustria is not immune to heaviness and slowness and it is, surely, desirable that it accelerates further (it is not true that nothing has been done) in terms of a leaner organizational structure (without giving up the founding values of the identity and its representation on the territory) and a shared and innovative flexibility translated into facts (we already heard too many words).

What however really worries us is the uncontrolled explosion of many, too many subjectivities that risk finding a more fertile ground in the corporate world. Diego Della Valle, the man who linked his name to one of the most prestigious and globalized brands of the Country publicly expresses himself with the ways and language of an ordinary citizen, without addressing the solution of the Italian case (this is what we are speaking of); he knows it is not up to him, but he legitimately wants to put on the record that things are not going well and to underline that we cannot continue like this. With his statement he gained a spot in the historical memory of the Country, but he risks not contributing to making it come out of the shallows in which it fell.

I would like to say from now that for Sergio Marchionne we appreciate the capability of breaking the conventional schemes; he took the first private Italian company (on which no one was betting more than one cent), he managed to keep it alive, strongly globalized it and he can now proudly say that he is ready to face the final challenge (that still has to be played) of repositioning it on the global automotive market keeping in Italy one of the thinking heads and a strong part of its productive force. As Alberto Orioli said yesterday, Il Sole 24 Ore will always be with Marchionne in terms of a more modern entry and exit into the labor market not because the ECB asks, but because he knows what makes "precarious" an entire generation and what has to be done to reduce this plague that can no longer be tolerated.

Exactly because of this, however, only reasons of "mandrakiness" can, in our opinion, justify the choice (in the name of this flag) to leave Confindustria, which first pursued the road of new contracts with separate agreements (without which the Pomigliano deal would have been impossible) and then managed to make it bulletproof with the subsequent signature from the Cgil. We just have to hope for a clarification and in the predominance of a spirit of responsibility that the moment objectively requires.

The same spirit that, for the first time, sees united all the business organizations (from the credit sector to insurers to cooperatives to trade and artisans) not in an electoral poster but in a tiring job of service, as the managing class, that produced a five point proposal for growth and was made available to the political class of the Country so that it can prove (with facts) that it is able to seize the authentic number. What are needed immediately are transparent and binding decisions that are the result of a linear, and mandatory, exercise of political responsibility. If the small tax on private wealth (Il Sole 24 Ore did not foresee this in its nine point manifesto for growth published on July 16, the same day in which the first budget law was approved: the one that postponed everything) is not convincing, let's do without, but let's have the courage and dignity to realize that without measures for growth we will never ever solve (also) the biggest problem that is the huge public debt.

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