FINANCE / So the Italians risk paying the rescue of German banks

The recent celebrations for the thirty years of the fall of the Berlin Wall reminded me of when I realized that that day, November 9th, is also the day of the dedication of the Lateran Basilica of Rome, the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, which is also the episcopal see of the Bishop of Rome. This "coincidence" of dates made me think of the famous verse in which Jesus, entrusting the leadership of the Church to Peter, states that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it". Now, thirty years later, I think we can say that the fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of the great illusion: the illusion that communism as an ideology was over and that the world was moving towards an era of peace and prosperity.

There was prosperity, but only for great riches. For the rest, violence has become a social problem in almost all societies in the modern world, while the disparity in wealth is constantly increasing. Furthermore, all this is caused by the dominant, liberal and globalist ideology that shares some fundamental themes with communism: the globalization of the economy, the limitation of individual liberties, the suppression of national identities both as peoples' identity and as state sovereignty.

The gradual impoverishment of the middle class through the compression of wages and unemployment are only an obvious consequence of all this. Here it is not a question of Germany or France or Italy or Greece, but it concerns everyone, so much so that the signs of these problems they can be seen very well even in Germany, often referred to as the reference country, as it is in fact in the financial sphere. In fact, the spread is calculated precisely with respect to the interests of German government bonds, without this being an element defined somewhere, in some international treaty or by some (unlikely) rule of economic science. It is set as a fact of reality, as if the German one were the only reality to which the rest of the world has to adapt.

As the Gospel teaches, the tree is recognized by the fruits and what we have today is undoubtedly the fruit of twenty years of euro and twelve years of crisis faced with the rules of the euro and with the rules and actions taken during the crisis. These fruits speak of a banking system that is still shaky and in need of further injections of liquidity so as not to collapse at the first gust of headwind. The economy is in continuous suffering and the specter of a new recession is starting to be less and less spectrum and more and more a current figure, after the recent news of the German economy receding.

The hosannas attributed to Draghi, hailed as the savior of the euro at his last conference, have hidden all this. But the same Draghi in his speech recalled the need to proceed to the banking union, a meeting deemed impossible, politically, because German politicians have always based their proclamations at home on the determination to prevent "the Germans from paying for the countries of South Europe". The novelty of the last few days is that there has been a rumor that the German giant Deutsche Bank has failed. This is not news, but only an unconfirmed indiscretion. But it would not be news because everyone knows that the derivatives of that bank without a present value amount to about twenty times the GDP of Germany and five times the GDP of the EU.

I repeat, there is no confirmation of this indiscretion. But what is making us think bad is Minister Scholz's sudden change in line, who stated that it is time to proceed with a European insurance of current accounts. A baffling reversal for such a politician that many have commented on as an attempt to protect German account holders as they now have the problem.

On this issue already several German economists had expressed themselves favorably, considering it a necessary step to avoid the implosion of the euro zone, but German policy had so far proved deaf to such appeals. And after this change of scene many politicians reacted with the usual mental scheme: "We do not want to pay for the countries of southern Europe"; they have not yet realized that they are in trouble. Merkel also reacted badly, showing that the minister spoke without her being consulted. This is the second time it has happened and it is not a good political signal; it is increasingly politically marginalized, also due to the continuing electoral defeats of its party.

The grotesque thing is that a possible rescue should take place through the Mes fund, implemented according to its rules. This means that the bailouts can be accessed by countries with "regular" accounts (ie with a debt that is not too high), therefore Italy, a generous contributor to this fund, is in fact excluded. In other words, Italian taxpayers are likely to participate generously in the rescue of German banks. All this suggests how irrational the European monetary and banking architecture is and should be sufficient for a political determination to preserve Italian interests, through adequate monetary sovereignty.

Thus sovereignty is not the childish attempt to "do it yourself" in a totally connected world, as is described today by the main commentators. Sovereignty is a right, a fundamental human right according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, and corresponds to the right and duty to preserve one's own interests, the interests of one's own people.

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