La crisi che non passa. Verso il Rapporto 2012 sull’economia globale e l’Italia

The IAI, together with the ‘Luigi Einaudi’ Centre for Research and Documentation and UBI Banca, organized a conference on May 8 to present the 16th Report on the global economy and Italy. Edited by Mario Deaglio and published in partnership with the ‘Luigi Einaudi’ Centre and UBI Banca, the report analyses the events of 2011, with the aim of identifying some major trends in the global crisis which has not yet come to an end and from which, whichever way you look at it, there seems to be no way out.

The study was difficult – Deaglio stressed – as 2011 was full of contingencies such as the Arab Spring, which upset the balance in the Middle East, and the weakening of international institutions, which are now less able to manage events.

After describing the main stages of the recession by analysing four of its key dimensions (financial phenomena, real phenomena, social effects and external effects), Deaglio ended his remarks with some “recipes” for exiting the “no growth” trap. Italy’s real sickness, according to the speaker, is that the exponential growth of production costs has overtaken the increase in consumer prices in the last ten years, while gross profits have fallen and net investments decreased.

Fabrizio Saccomanni, Director General of the Bank of Italy, closing speaker at the conference, stated that “every crisis ends sooner or later and financial crises, in particular, take longer to end”. In Saccomanni’s opinion, the first thing to do this time is to reduce public and private debt (which can only be done gradually in order to avoid recession) and, above all, to reach a consensus on the strategies to implement.