Newsgroup: it.sport.calcio.milan
Titolo: [eng] non riusciamo a fregarli tutti

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/2/6/worldupdates/2012-02-06T115709Z_1_TRE8150S6_RTROPTT_0_UK-ITALY-MONTI&sec=Worldupdates
 
 
Italy charm offensive more style than substance
By Gavin Jones
 
ROME (Reuters) - The enthusiasm surrounding Mario Monti is excessive. He 
has not had time to address Italy's problems seriously, never mind fix them.
Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti addresses a news conference after an 
European Union summit in Brussels January 30, 2012.
Yet he is feted by world leaders and the international press who treat 
him as the saviour of Italy and probably the euro zone.
 
Monti, with his economists' training and measured, articulate manner, is 
certainly impressive, and the contrast with his much lampooned 
predecessor Silvio Berlusconi puts him in a still brighter light.
Last week he even received a prize as European of the Year in the French 
parliament, yet Italy's strengths and weaknesses are exactly the same as 
before he took office in November and its near term economic outlook has 
actually weakened sharply.
 
Monti has so far done very little to improve Italy's medium term growth 
prospects, which is the only way the country can hope to sustainably 
lower its huge public debt, equal to around 120 percent of output.
Instead, he has tightened already extremely tight fiscal policy in a 
probably vain attempt to balance the budget in 2013 and - if his latest 
steps are approved by parliament - slightly opened up some very marginal 
corners of the service sector.
 
The charm offensive launched by Monti and his team to woo markets and 
opinion makers is highly reminiscent of a similar drive in the 1990s 
that helped Italy join the euro currency from its launch.
Then, as now, a group of market-oriented, English-speaking policymakers 
visited the London's financial district and held briefings for the 
foreign media to explain reforms and assuage concerns.
 
For Monti, read former Prime Minister Romano Prodi or his economy 
minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and for current Treasury chief Vittorio 
Grilli, read Mario Draghi, now president of the European Central Bank.
Then, as now, the goal was to bring down prohibitively high borrowing 
costs and persuade Germany of the country's merits, with current 
Chancellor Angela Merkel personified by the then notoriously rigid 
finance minister Theo Waigel.
Italy's bond yields plummeted just as they are falling now, allowing it 
to join the currency club, but then, as now, the enthusiasm was 
premature and failed to appreciate that the country's fundamental 
competitiveness problems were unresolved.
 
TECHNOCRATS
 
When Italy is in trouble it wheels out the technocrats, and because it 
has always produced hugely able, cosmopolitan figures such as Monti, 
Draghi and Ciampi, the world is duly impressed.
Yet Italy's problems are ones of substance not of style, and they will 
take years to resolve whoever briefly takes the reins when the crises 
become most acute.
 
Italy's chronically sluggish economy is weighed down by corruption, tax 
evasion, organised crime, a low birth rate, impoverished south, poor 
education levels, inadequate infrastructures and a huge public debt.
The list could go on, with each economist having his or her own view 
over which is most serious, from a dysfunctional justice system, to 
oppressive bureaucracy, to an inefficient labour market and dismally low 
employment rate.
 
This is the real Italy, or at least a huge part of it, and Monti would 
probably need two five-year terms to really change it. Instead, he will 
be around for a year at best, before the career politicians take over again.
In the meantime Italian benchmark bond yields have fallen from an 
unsustainable level of close to 8 percent in November, just before Monti 
took over, to well below 6 percent. But this may have more to do with 
the European Central Bank than Italy's prime minister.
 
"The markets are more concerned with the actions of (ECB President) 
Draghi than those of Monti," said Spiro Sovereign Strategy director 
Nicholas Spiro, in reference to cheap 3-year loans from the ECB giving 
banks handsome profits if they buy high yielding Italian bonds.
A Reuters quarterly survey of 20 economists last month showed Monti's 
arrival has certainly not boosted expectations for Italy's near term 
prospects for growth or public finances.
 
The 2012 GDP forecast plunged to -1.2 percent from zero in the previous 
poll, while the budget deficit was seen at 2.2 percent of GDP, virtually 
in line with 2.3 percent previously and well above the government's goal 
of 1.6 percent.
None of the analysts surveyed expected Monti to reach his goal of a 
balanced budget in 2013.
Unprecedentedly, the new government did not even release new forecasts 
for the public debt at the end of last year to avoid disappointment at 
the Treasury's latest internal estimates that show upward revisions for 
2011 and 2012.
 
AUSTERITY
 
In December, Monti adopted austerity measures worth a net 21 billion 
euros, following 60 billion euros of belt tightening already passed last 
year by the much reviled Berlusconi.
His "Save Italy" package contained decisive pension reform - by far 
Monti's most important step so far - but few other spending cuts, and 
was criticised for an overwhelming reliance on tax hikes which Monti 
admits will intensify the recession Italy expects this year.
 
To compensate, he promised a "Grow Italy" package of reforms, which 
amounted to abolishing minimum tariffs for professions, increasing the 
number of pharmacies and notaries and several other minor, micro-measures.
The reforms, which are still before parliament, were applauded by 
Italy's partners, yet were watered down from early proposals and are 
certainly not the key to improving a growth rate that has averaged just 
0.4 percent in the last ten years.
 
"Maybe liberalising taxis and pharmacies won't have a big impact on 
growth, but not doing it would give the impression Monti can't even 
liberalise taxis and pharmacies," said Alberto Mingardi, the director of 
the Istituto Bruno Leoni, a free-market thing-tank before Monti's final 
reform plan was issued.
 
In the end Monti did not even liberalise pharmacies and taxis to any 
significant degree, watering down early plans to allow medicines to be 
sold more widely and increase the number of taxi licences.
A top Italian policymaker who asked not to be named said the reforms 
were "cosmetic" and had skirted far more relevant areas of high service 
sector costs and inefficiency, such as banks and dominant positions in 
energy and other markets.
Treasury chief Vittorio Grilli admitted to foreign reporters recently 
that the measures would probably do nothing to help economic activity 
for at least three years.
 
He also inadvertently highlighted the fragility of Italy's debt 
reduction plans when he lamented that years of prudent fiscal policy had 
cut public debt from 121 percent of GDP in 1995 to below 104 percent in 
2007, only for it to bounce back to 120 percent due to financial crises 
and recession since 2008.
For high debt, chronically low growth Italy, it seems dangerous to 
assume that future prudent fiscal policy will not be undone by similar 
crises long before the debt falls anywhere near the EU's reference level 
of 60 percent of GDP.

 Italy charm offensive more style than substance
 
a qualche banca di merda evidentemente non piace il calo dello spread
 
azioni violente, cazzo: rapimenti, omicidi di manager. e invece gli 
indignados campeggiano in piazza credendo di cambiare qualcosa. e i più 
cretini di tutti spaccano le vetrine e incendiano le macchine comprate con 
finanziamento, così in banca si masturbano di felicità
 

 By Gavin Jones
 
il solito approccio anglosassone a questa crisi. Niente di nuovo sotto
il sole. Imho ha più ragione che torto, ma il cambiamento c'è stato
eccome. Questo governo rischia pure di mettere la situazione a posto
entro la scadenza (a scapito dei più poveri e della classe media
onesta purtroppo, come al solito). Ovvio invece che gli anglosassoni
non vedono l'ora di vedere il fallimento dell'euro. Se la nostra
moneta iniziasse a funzionare veramente (con un ruolo centrale della
BCE) e l'euro area iniziasse a fare serie politiche economiche
integrate con leggi/regole condivise su una finanza meno strapotente,
l'economia inglese si sgretolerebbe.