Tag Archives: Mario Monti

Three reasons Italy will surprise those writing it off too early

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A recent article by @FrankBruni on the New York Times had Italy talk quite a lot about it.

Italy “breaks your heart“, is it’s heading. The fil rouge of its content is that Italians think about Italy as

a country that they love but have lost faith in

Bruni is adamant about

Italians’ theatrical pessimism, [and] their talent for complaint

Yet, in addition to that, “the arias have been different this time around”, he says. His elaborate conclusion is one of despair:

I was zipping past wonders, zooming through splendor. But I hadn’t a clue if I was actually getting anywhere

Let me share here a comment I posted on the New York Time website, as I believe this point deserves more than a passing word.

Indeed Italy “breaks your heart” and indeed when we look ahead we see uncertainty and challenges.

I want to spend a word of hope, though.

There are at least three reasons people better not write Italy off too early:

  1. We are a net beneficiary of a higher degree of discipline that the European Union might bring over time. The Governments led by Mario Monti and Enrico Letta have started working on some crucial structural reforms. The European Union is here to stay, in spite of what many people still think. Let me now remind what Benjamin Franklin replied, when someone stated to him, in 1776, “We need to hang out together”.”Yes, was his reply, we need to hang out together, otherwise we will hang out separately”. This wonderfully applies to the European Union;
  2. Our pension system, and INPS, the public body overseeing it, has been restructured and is in far better health than any of its equivalents in the Western world (strangely, one of Italy’s best kept secrets). This gives Italy a financial tranquillity that no other Western country has. All of them, but Italy, will have to come to grip with huge pension unbalances. This is way too often overlooked in discussions about Italy’s government debt to GDP ratio;
  3. What seems a chaotic disorder is, in many ways, a very solid sistem. Our decentralised republic, with all its drawbacks, has guaranteed growth and stability a lot more than it appears. I will just quote Nassim Taleb, who was recently in Italy and we could listen to him say “When you look at things that have improved with time, a lot of them come from Italy“. We are far more “anti-fragile” than we look. Great success stories continue to be in the making.

We need to keep working hard.

Yet, Italy will make it.

Tommaso Arenare

 

Not a passing comet star. A couple of reasons to believe in Italy’s (and Professor Monti’s) future

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I have thought about the one thing I would post here, this morning, after Prime Minister Monti’s announcing his resignation yesterday evening, a little over a year after he commenced an outstanding work of helping his country and Europe succeed.

I will only post a video, with one comment.

This is the video: Professor Monti speaking in Washington, on 27 September 2012, in front of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This is quintessentially Professor Monti. Most answers people seek are in there. Just watch it. Let me just note, out of the thorough talk, Professor Monti reminding the global audience that

…by the way, Italy will have next year a balanced budget in structural terms,… And we will be one of the first two, hopefully, EU member states to have reached that… very demanding objective, which implies, to give you an idea, that given the huge stock of debt, we will have and we are having year after year some 5 percent of GDP primary surplus.

Professor Monti is a senator for life, not a passing comet star. He also added, last September in Washington, talking about Italy’s future after the elections (now expected for February or March 2013):

I will be there. I will consider.

I will finish with what I tweeted then and a little hope, again from Professor Monti’s speech at the Council on Foreign Relations:

Seven more years of Monti’s leadership, as seven years is the mandate that the Italian Parliament will award to our next President of the Italian Republic.

Against all odds, Italy will make it.

Tommaso Arenare

This is about just three tweets

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My first year on Twitter, what a wonderful experience…

I will share three tweets, out of about 700, an average of almost two per day.

I have devoted an entire post to my first tweet, hence I can avoid to start from it here.

On 4 December 2011, Prime Minister Monti had been in the role for less than 20 days. He held his first press conference in the role, highlighting the Italian Government’s initial emergency measures to be put in place. We will remember this as a milestone moment in the history of the European Union, Italy will remain grateful to Professor Monti’s courage and dedication. I like to remember that “only the brave” would then feel that “Italy would make it”:

Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel laureate and a pioneer of #diversity, is an Italian lady that makes us all proud. She escaped from fascism, returned, won the nobel prize, was appointed senator for life, turned one hundred and three on 22 April.

Celebrating her is also celebrating a phenomenal year for Italy (and possibly for Europe) in enhancing gender diversity at board level and establishing new best practice in corporate governance.

We will need female talent and leadership ever more. Here’s my tweet on Rita Levi Montalcini:

It’s difficult to limit the focus to three tweets out of almost seven hundred.

History happened, initially rather unnoticed, on 26 July. The Mario Draghi speech on “whatever it takes” deserves a full read, in its original version.

This is a moment when a larger than ever number of people realised that the Euro zone is already a political entity and that it is here to stay. #moreEurope:

Tommaso Arenare

Only the brave

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Erik F Nielsen is Global Chief Economist of Unicredit, one of continental Europe’s leading banks. Prior to that, he had been Chief European Economist at Goldman Sachs, for several years. That was the job he held when I first met him, in 2011.

I have always admired Erik’s ability to see through the fog, his being brave in his well-rooted capacity to read people and their behaviour.

For a second, let’s go back to the situation in Europe a year ago. On 10 October 2011, Moody’s and Fitch had cut Italy’s rating heavily (Moody’s by three notches to A plus – yet higher than today’s…). Erik pointed this out, but then clearly argued:

“But sometimes the market gets it all wrong, as is the case now.”

Hence, his argument continued, Italy’s debt was a much safer bet than others, such as the UK’s triple A. Italy would get things done and make it.

Erik gave me the occasion for my first tweet ever, on that very day:

Almost a year (and many hundred tweets) later, Professor Monti, Italy’s Prime Minister, could speak at the Council on Foreign Relations, on 27 September, pointing out that

…by the way, Italy will have next year a balanced budget in structural terms,… And we will be one of the first two, hopefully, EU member states to have reached that… very demanding objective, which implies, to give you an idea, that given the huge stock of debt, we will have and we are having year after year some 5 percent of GDP primary surplus.

Only the brave (as Erik Nielsen, Professor Monti and, luckily, many others with them) could have seen all this, a year or so ago.

I will finish with another tweet and a little hope, again from Professor Monti’s speech at the Council on Foreign Relations:

Seven more years of Monti’s leadership, as seven years is the mandate that the Italian Parliament will award to our next President of the Italian Republic.

Only the brave…

Tommaso Arenare