If we were to do a survey asking people which industry has the most influence in the world, well, I think the unanimous answer would be “finance”.
It is widely believed that big finance has even come to dominate the world.
And then it might appear a paradox that so few people deal with financial matters.
The Financial Times, perhaps the most popular financial newspaper in the world, the newspaper of the City of London, in 2015, despite having balance sheets that showed laughable profits, was bought by the Japanese publishing company Nikkei for the sum of 1 billion and four hundred million dollars.
Why all that money for a newspaper that makes almost insignificant profits?
Why Financial Times is the most trusted media brand in the world.
In short, the Financial Times is a kind of Bible. It’s a way of saying, I don’t want to be blasphemous.
This does not mean that it is truly a reliable newspaper, on the contrary, it is good to immediately clarify that the Financial Times has become the official mainstream press organ, therefore a newspaper that is anything but authoritative, even if considered as such.
But let’s get to the point, a few days ago the results of a small survey carried out by the Financial Times were published.
Ten economists were asked which eurozone country will find itself most exposed to a debt crisis when, in the coming months, the European Central Bank raises interest rates again and buys fewer bonds.
Well nine out of ten economists answered… let’s see if you guess it… no! It’s not Germany or Holland, well I know it’s hard to guess, you won’t believe it but … it’s Italy.
What a surprise.
Nine economists out of ten have indicated Italy as the country that will be most exposed, let’s translate: “the most exposed country” means the country whose economy will suffer the worst consequences from the rise in interest rates and the reduction in purchases by the ECB.
Nine out of ten, not bad, we won hands down.
Well, the Financial Times gave prominence to the news, which obviously was not picked up with emphasis in Italy, the Financial Times published the result of this poll on the front page specifying that what the ten economists were asked was “which country was most at risk of an uncorrelated sell-off in its government bond markets?”
I specify that the term sell-off can be translated as a sale.
So, roughly speaking, which country’s government bonds will suffer the greatest losses.
And the response was more than eloquent, nine out of ten economists missed the en plein by a hair’s breadth.
We recall that at the moment the reference Italian government bonds, i.e. the ten-year BTPs, have achieved a yield of 4.6%, 2.1% more than the German ones, in short, a spread of 210 points.
Of course, Meloni heavily complained to the ECB and expressly to the President Christine Lagarde.
In fact, in the press conference at the end of the year, our Premier, after having stated that she intends to respect the autonomy of the European Central Bankstated that “it would be better to avoid pejorative choices and above all it would be useful to manage communication on the choices you make well”.
In short, Giorgia uses typical expressions of political language, she makes an absolutely acceptable premise, to prove herself to be an objective and non-partisan person, but she immediately denies herself by assuming a partisan position.
That is, he states that she respects the autonomy of the European Central Bank, However …
But the criticism, so … in short … it’s not really that you respect it. In short, it respects the autonomy of the ECB, but only if it makes decisions with which you agree, when it makes decisions that it doesn’t like…
Because when Meloni says it would be better to avoid, she uses the conditional but intends to use the imperative, in fact she intends to say: next time avoid … therefore respect for autonomy goes down the drain.
We then clarify that the object of the dispute is not to establish right or wrong, in the particular case, Meloni can easily be right, this is not in question, but it is objectively true that we tend to respect the decisions that others have to take independently above all, if not only, when we share them, when instead they don’t suit us… we only respect autonomy in words.
But let’s go back to the Financial Times and the survey with the ten economists, in fact I used the weapon of irony, but there wouldn’t be much to laugh about.
Would we objectively have answered the survey in that way too? Because if the answer is “Yes” then we should be concerned because it means that there are grim times ahead of us.
It should be noted that the problem would not be the reduction in the value of our government bonds which have already been issued almost entirely at fixed rates, therefore the bonds already issued shouldn’t worry us, we must be haunted, as I have already said in a another video find investors who subscribe to newly issued government bonds.
And Meloni’s words only confirm that even the leaders of our government are perfectly aware of the difficulties we will encounter in the coming months.