20 March 2006

The Debt Culture

These five years have turned upside down values that have always been part of Italian culture. One of these is saving, once considered to be a virtue. We taught our children to save and often we gave them a Savings account as a gift with a tiny amount to start off. At the same time we warned them not to buy anything that they couldn’t afford.
It was pure good sense then and it still is.

Today in Italy, first they sell illusions, then they sell you money. The finance people do this as do the banks with the blessing of the government in an attempt to “get the economy to take off again”.
The task of politics should not be to get Italians into debt as a favour to the banks and to make the Gross Domestic Product grow, neither should it be to create a favourable culture so that that happens.
To dangle 100% mortgages at variable rates as an offer to Italian families so that they can buy their first home when this is inevitably destined to turn into an insolvency situation is profoundly wrong. Just as it is wrong to allow widespread publicity and a culture such that we need to get into debt to go on holiday or to buy the latest technological wizardry.

We have been living in Wonderland, built from our debts and the loss of fundamental values.
And the coach driver who has brought us into this false world that is without ideals seems to have disappeared off the scene as we saw with his staging with the Confindustria.
We have to start off again, we have to turn the page, to return to values that made Italy economically great as happened in the period after the war.

The protection of buying power and of the value of our savings are two topics that must be tackled by the next Government so that we can find an exit from a terrible film, in which many people had thought themselves to be entrapped by an unscrupulous impresario.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Economy