6 - Italy: the sick man of Europe

Summary

“Our politicians? They are like ancient country nobles who, in order to hang onto their luxury lifestyles, mortgage the castle.”

Beniamino Andreatta, July 1991

As we have seen, different approaches and contrasting views of politicians and economists characterize both emerging economies and advanced countries. I would point out that, in my analysis, I have been obliged to simplify a great deal, and to highlight certain important points such as the existence of constraints linked to available resources, which, to be sustainable, any economic policy must respect. Otherwise, the budgetary constraint will take over and will be enforced by a recession or crisis, even if it might take a long time before an unsustainable position is reached.

The examples I have given are somewhat extreme, but many of their characteristics apply to other countries. For example, the post-2008 Spanish crisis, which I touched on in Chapter 2, is a case of excessive credit expansion that financed the construction sector. This is not so different from the case I discussed in the context of Belarus, although it is more complicated, because the strong credit expansion was determined not by an explicit choice of the Spanish authorities (as was the case in Belarus) but by an excessive inflow of capital from abroad. The fault of the Spanish authorities was that they did not do enough to contain the credit boom.

In short, my reasoning applies, to varying degrees, to the advanced countries as well. An interesting case of an advanced country where, in the recent past, politicians have indicated an intention to circumvent the budget constraint, is Italy. Since the end of the 1990s, Italy’s growth has been dismal. The country suffered particularly badly from the 2008–09 global crisis and, in 2011–12, found itself at the epicentre of the European sovereign debt crisis. In recent years, Italy’s persistent economic difficulties have favoured the emergence of forces with populist connotations, such as the Northern League and the 5-Star Movement, which came to power in a coalition government in spring 2018.