The spread has substituted the body of the electorate. The “coup de spread” in place of the old “coup d'état”. No loss of blood, no demonstration in the streets, no “hot Autumn”. The spread instead of the Spritz. A hundred more points between the Italian bond and the German one and the game is over. No one is weeping for Berlusconi, but we all should be weeping for democracy. If Parliament is made up of people appointed by a few party secretaries, professor Monti was elected by the spread. If the markets were to change their minds about him, if he were to show himself to be too tender with tax payers, it would be enough to have another “coup de spread” to set off terror among the Italians. And voilà: another technical guy that can’t get any more technical would be swearing in with Napolitano. That’s to say, a guy like Amato. The liquidator, appointed by the markets is the President of the Council, this is where this wretched nation has got to. It was necessary to avoid repercussions for the French banks that hold a quarter of our public debt, and the performance of the euro, and thus German exports.
We have done our bit for putting our head on the block of international finance. Of the 1,900 billion of debt, about a half has been placed abroad, from Great Britain to China. And it’s enough for the next sales of 200 billion bonds to be deserted to make the country collapse. We cannot devalue the lira. We cannot at a European level print new money, like the United States did when it had gone bankrupt big-time in August when they raised the maxim limit on their public debt by 2,400 billion dollars. What’s left for us? Sell off the silverware to honour our debts. To the pawn shop, we’ll take the property of the state, the shares of the few big companies that are still left, like Eni, part of our personal property, the cuts to social services. It’s true that we have sinned, but the punishment should be useful for something. Instead it’s almost certain that not only will we leave the euro, but that the euro itself will not hold up in the next few years. By now that is what’s being written by the best international minds on the economy. And then what? Right now the mantra that is most in use is “Monti is the only alternative” accompanied by “We cannot exit from the euro”. There is always an alternative, a “plan B”. We have to consider the exit from the euro as a possibility. To lose everything after a policy of weeping and blood with a devalued lira doesn’t seem like a great objective to me.