We must recover 24 billion in two years. Will it be enough to keep us in the eurozone? Shadows in the operation to rebound from the deficit which seems too influenced by pressure groups.

The Empire of the Market

By Alberto FerrucciPublished on cittanuova.it on 01/06/2010

The reliability guarantee linked to belonging to the eurozone has allowed Italy to delay the payment of 1800 billion in debt over the last 7.5 years. Over the next year, "only" 275 billion will be due, and 350 billion will be issued to cover the debt of 2010 – an equivalent to 5 percent of the GNP.

Thanks to the euro, the cost of debt was only 4 percent, 76 billion. But, if the market "decides" that Italian titles are unreliable like those of Greece, in 2011, new titles could reach costs of even 7 percent – 10 billion more in the first year, 20 in the second, 30 in the third and so on. Remaining in the eurozone could be difficult.

A storm on the market and on the world economy. The responsibilities of credit rating agencies 

Rating. An Unbearable Conflict of Interests

By Alberto Ferrucci
Published on cittanuova.it on 10/05/2010 

Two years after the explosion of the crisis originating from having cancelled all the laws that governed the financial market, we have talked a lot about changing the rules, but nothing has been done. One of the "side effects" of this lack of decision, due to the powerful strength of who opposes it, are three poor employees who suffocated by fire smoke in an Athens bank, among whom a pregnant woman. 

During the original outbreak of the crisis, one of the aspects that immediately seemed the most scandalous was the fact that credit rating agencies maintained the evaluation of maximum trustworthiness to Parmalat, Enron and Lehman Brothers until a few days prior to their failure. Not only were they paid by whom whose titles they were offering to the market, but also their major shareholders were large investment funds that operate on the very same market. 

The Turin auto manufacturer intends to implement an outright leap in productivity. From the separation into two companies to the reorganization of production, the main changes

Fiat and the Italian Trademark By Alberto Ferrucci

By Alberto Ferrucci
Published on cittanuova.it on 26/04/2010

The fact that Fiat is separating into two distinct public limited companies - the auto sector and the sector of large transporters, agricultural machines and the like - can be useful for various alliances in the two branches. In the case of autos, the partnership has already been decided on with Chrysler, with Marchionne as administrator of the due companies. The only problem is how they will divide the debt. Both will be immediately held responsible for it by agreement, but when the decision is made on how to do so, it will influence the value of the two companies' shares, which will remain in the hands of the current shareholders.

The European Union´s decision to concede a 30 million Euro loan to Greece makes stock exchanges happier, but Athenians need to give up the improper behavior of the past.

It´s no longer time for cleverness

By Alberto Ferrucci
Published on città nuova.it on 14/04/2010

On January 1, 2001, Greece agreed to the economic and monetary union established three years earlier by the eleven countries that were most convinced about a united Europe. Since then, savings, titles and actions made in Dracme (the Greek monetary unit) include a fixed tax when converted to Euro, and the Greeks, like the Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish before them, were becoming richer thanks to the solidarity of more efficient European countries, whereit was becoming less expensive to get their products and services out in those promising markets. 

The monetary union, which favors investments in weaker countries where money costs less, is based on the Maastricht Treaty on which the value of the common currency depends. All participating countries commit themselves to rigorous management of the state budget so that the difference between annual expenditures and income do not exceed three percent. 

The Entrepreneur: a Law for Work

By Alberto Ferrucci
Published in Città Nuova n.7/2010 

When it was understood that Greece had rigged its deficit from 12.7 to look as if it was at nearly 3 percent, and the risk of speculation was noticed on titles of other European countries, including ours, the prospective of an exit cliff from the shared currency made every hypothesis of increased public spending in favor of work disappear from political debate. A right decision as tactic, but one which cannot become strategy. We need a tomorrow in which, thanks to a working relationship that is as a stable as possible, youth can start families.

Businesses aspire to having work relationships like this, but today these need to be reestablished. In Italy, for example, it is easier to divorce your wife than to end a working relationship, despite the excess of personnel or scarce yield. In businesses that have more than fifteen employees, if one is fired, he has the right to prosecute. And if he wins, he has the right, besides contractual fines, to receive his stipend for the entire period of the process: at least three years, with eventual reintegration into the business.

Investing on work, not on subsidies

Like a tax on air

Published on Cittánuova.it on 23/01/2010

The first article of the constitution reads that "Italy is a Democratic Republic, founded on work". While elaborating the text, the constitutional fathers could have founded it on solidarity, fraternity, liberty or equality. But evidently their cultures encountered a significant unifying moment that remains as a precious inheritance, thinking of how much they gave their life for those results, on the value of "work".

"I don´t want subsidies. I want work". Words that we hear on the lips of fathers, young diplomats and graduates, the self-employeed and entrepreneurs. Before receiving income, then, one of human nature´s fundamental needs is to be in the position to provide for oneself and others through work.

Banks and unfair priviledges

By Alberto Ferrucci

In 1933, after the Stock Market crash of ´29, the United States deliberated the Glass Steagall Act which imposed a clear distinction between commerical banks (which deal with savings) and investment banks (which gather capital through their securities for great financial operations, with higher profits and higher risks). This was a law that was effective for 66 years, until it was abolished in 1999 by a Republican majority and a Democratic president in order to make the economy more free.

An inheritance not to betray

By Alberto Ferrucci

I have few memories of the second world war, but there is one that I will never forget: that of a young, curly-haired, brown-faced Sicilian, an official in the Italian army who, in the moment of the army´s ruin on September 8, 1943, had decided to go up into the mountains to organize bands of partisans.

I was seven years old, and my father was prisoner in Australia. My mother, siblings and I had been evacuated to Piemonte, in a town called Trinitá. I had been peeking at the young man through the legs of adults while he dignifiedly left the farmers the guarantee that, at the end of the war, his brigade would pay back the flour and veal taken. I saw him again through the persian blinds while being dragged, staggering, through the  main street by German soldiers towards his execution by a firing squad. He hadn´t wanted to betray his companions even when they bashed his chest in with rocks.

Invest on humanity

By Alberto Ferrucci
published in Città Nuova N.17/2009

Cramped between the limits of the Euro and the promise "to not put our hands in the pockets of the Italian people", our government wants to recuperate a few million with a 5 percent remittance on the return of illegally exported capital. It offers a lifejacket for who had exported their earnings in order to avoid paying the community who made those taxes possible, betraying it. We´ve already spoken about this.

If these actions confirm that - unfortunately, in Italy, once again - the sly are able to get away things, then what positive contribution can one give if he doesn´t want to be sly because he doesn´t want to betray his country? The recent encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate highlighted another type of civil society, but what can that civil society do? And, in particular, what contribution can be made by those who are not affected by the crisis because, perhaps, their business is going well, as are earnings, pensions or savings?

Editorial

Economy, which incentives?

by Alberto Ferrucci
published in Città Nuova N. 11/2009

The whole world is indignant for the incredible bonuses poured upon 70 executives so that they would not abandon the AIG insurance agency, in which they had to put in tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to avoid failure.

Even if chasing them away would be a just recompense, it´s logical that who has valid executives tries to keep them and who doesn´t have them tries to attract them: but with which incentives? In recent years, stock options are fashionable as are business shares offered at reduced prices, a much greater incentive when, with many profits, one is able to increase their value on the stock market.