Europe and the noose around its neck: like the mafia
by Alessandro Somma
A few days ago the well-known German newspaper die Welt , known for its conservative and at times reactionary editorial line, felt the need to warn Chancellor Angela Merkel from showing excessive solidarity with the European countries affected by the Covid-19 emergency. Especially with Italy we should be careful: the country is plagued by the Mafia, and this is waiting for nothing more than jumping on the rain funding from Brussels. It is therefore better to allocate few funds, and above all to exercise tight control to avoid waste and rubie.
It evidently escapes German friends that the mafia thrives precisely because money does not come from Brussels. Already now many companies forced to stop production are choked by debt and are therefore hungry for money. If this does not come through legal channels, the mafia is ready to provide it: immediately and without bureaucracy. To then demand usurious interests, then reduce entrepreneurs to the floor and finally force them to sell off their business.
On closer inspection, the behavior of organized crime helps us to understand how Europe is behaving with Italy. Our country is falling into a dramatic economic crisis, which will bring impoverishment and unemployment to its citizens and chasms in the state coffers. Our deficit and our debt will explode, and our GDP will collapse, just as we have to return to the path of budgetary balance: the Stability and Growth Pact has been suspended but will soon be reactivated. We therefore desperately need large sums, but not loaned, because in this way we would stick our heads in a noose ready to tighten in the coming months.
Of course, this condition is common to many European countries, but Germany and its satellites think they can do it alone. For this reason they refuse to share the economic effort: with the famous Eurobonds, or with debt securities issued by Europe, or with the monetization of the debt, that is with the purchase by the European Central Bank of debt securities issued by the member countries . Direct purchase from the latter and not from banks, as is the case with Quantitative easing, however, unable to reach the real economy.
This is the position reiterated in the last meeting of the Eurogroup by the Eurozone financial ministers, where little useful or worse harmful solutions were proposed. The creation of funds for companies and unemployment is of little use, first of all because they mobilize insufficient sums and then because they set in motion mere rounds: the funds are created by issuing securities on the market with irrevocable guarantees provided by individual States, and in any case the figures obtained must be returned and therefore increase the debt. The fund for recovery is of little use, of which nothing is said except that it will be discussed together with the European budget: therefore in too long a time, and above all knowing that nothing will be done. On the other hand, recourse to MES is harmful, whose financial assistance would not be subject to conditionality for healthcare costs only: they are still conditionalities as such, which can be reviewed later, and then we speak again of loans to be repaid.
Under these conditions, the optimisms and even the triumphant tones of those who comment on the decisions of the Eurogroup are truly incomprehensible, considering them a balanced compromise between the positions of the hawks in the north and the South European countries. If this compromise is not radically revised, Italy's fate is sealed: she correctly said that she will not resort to MES in order not to hang herself with her own hands, and therefore will only be able to have the money necessary to face the crisis by issuing bonds, or by getting into debt with the market, as well as possibly with funds for business and unemployment. At this point, Italian titles will be considered rubbish and can only be placed at high interests: so high as to not be sustainable, and therefore to lead to the Mes-style and Troika-style intervention. We will thus end Greece, with the rich European countries engaged in shopping at the sale prices of Italian businesses and public goods.
If this is the case, Italy's problem is not the mafia ready to eat the aid of Brussels, but Europe which acts like the mafia with Italian companies strangled by European selfishness. And faced with this stark reality, there is only one way: when the European Council meets to ratify the decisions of the Eurogroup, Italy will have to refuse to do so. Whatever it takes.
(April 10, 2020)
