ignazio visco : conference in memory of tommaso padoa - schioppa introductory remarks of mr ignazio visco, governor of the bank of italy, at the bank of italy conference in honour of tommaso padoa - schioppa, rome, 16 december 2011. * * * i am very grateful to all of you for being here today for this conference in memory of tommaso padoa - schioppa. i am glad that we have been able to bring together so many of his colleagues and friends who down through the years had the fortune to appreciate his intellectual and human qualities. and i am especially glad that we are gathering here at the bank of italy, the institution where he spent a good part of his professional life and the environment in which he first built an international reputation. an institution that, like the others he worked in, he helped to forge and to which he always remained deeply attached. for many of us tommaso was more than a colleague ; he was also a friend and a mentor. you could always count on his advice, his ability to anticipate and find concrete solutions to problems. conversation with him was always enlightening ; you benefited from having your ideas challenged, you sharpened your reasoning, you learned, from his example, how to deliver results. in the year since his untimely death i have often missed his wisdom and acumen, his lucid vision of the road ahead, and i have often found myself trying to guess what his advice would have been at a time when we face so many difficult challenges in italy, his native country, and europe, the ideal to which he devoted much of his life. tommaso was devoted to his country and was always conscious of its great potential. but his innate optimism did not blind him to its serious weaknesses or to the troubles that lay ahead. he considered italy a country suffering from a grave illness : twenty - five years of healthy growth after the second world war had been followed by two decades of growth achieved with “ toxic stimuli ” : “ a combination of inflation and currency devaluation, deficitfinanced public expenditure, accumulation of debt and impoverishment of capital ”. 1 the result was a country at once heavily indebted and under - capitalized, growing too slowly, where social inequalities were bound to increase. with his writings, speeches and actions, as minister for the economy he sought to instil

of one government or another. it is precisely in such difficult moments that the european central bank must also be able to take decisions and have the capacity to act in its area of competence. it cannot and must not wait for a general social and political consensus. decisions regarding stability policy do require courage every now and then, even though they are, of course, guided by sound judgement. in such critical moments, i hope that sarasto ’ s wish in mozart ’ s “ the magic flute ” will be granted to the future president and the vice - president ( and, of course, the other governing council members, too ) : “ oh, isis and osiris, send the spirit of wisdom to the young couple! you who guide the wanderers ’ steps, strengthen them with patience when in danger ”. ( whether or not that immediately leads you to believe that the european central bank resides “ in these holy halls ” is something i shall leave up to you. ) the independence of the future european central bank by no means implies, of course, that it will be detached from the community or from the general public. ( much as the bundesbank today is involved at the centre of german public life and public debate. ) it is precisely that independent position which requires the central bank to engage with the general public, to explain its monetary policy, and to make its motives and strategy as transparent as possible. it is not least for that reason that the bundesbank is advocating a pre - announced monetary target for european monetary policy, by which it must then allow itself to be judged. conversely, i can assure you that the general public, too, is keeping a close watch on monetary policy and subjecting it to a critical assessment. it notes every word which is written and spoken ( and, in some cases, precisely those words which remain unspoken ). i therefore believe that an independent central bank tends to be subjected to closer scrutiny by the public than some areas of policy. and this is as it should be. after all, a depoliticised currency is a currency which has remained as close to people as a borderless currency. but the crucial point is : a borderless currency must go hand in hand with a depoliticised currency. as a denationalised currency, the euro needs both elements. iv in the eyes of some analysts, the euro brings the monetary policy experiments of this century full circle. the century began and will end with a denationalised money.