Mario Draghi resigns and the European Central Bank raises interest rates half a point, twice as expected by the markets. History has wanted the two events to occur at the same time. One day we will know to what extent one thing has determined the other.
Half a point higher interest rates and a special mechanism to acquire debt from European countries in trouble. Those are the two main decisions adopted yesterday by the ECB. It was a day of strong emotions. The Italian risk premium reached 245 points, surpassing the Greek (236 points). Tranquility for Spain, for the moment: 124 points. When a great expectation is broken, its fall causes a crash. And it is undeniable that the banker Draghi had been elevated to the category of political myth in international circuits.
The Italian technocratic formula seemed capable of chilling history to a soft fluid. It has been like this for eighteen months. In the end, when there was only half a year left before the conclusion of the legislature, the circuits have suddenly heated up and the laboratory has been left in disgust. It was enough to look yesterday at the face of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, a Christian Democrat of old vintage who has gone through very hard times in his life. In 1980, the Sicilian mafia murdered his brother, a local DC leader who had stood up to organized crime in Palermo. Piersanti Mattarella died in Sergio's arms as he was being driven to hospital.
For better and for worse, Italy has the ability to act as a global beacon at some important moments. Italy is a very domestic country that knows how to speak the universal language. Banker Draghi's humiliating departure from the political arena sends a message: the Ukraine war is gaining scale. The battlefield is getting wider. Gas, cereals and countries at the limit of their possibilities. The war in the Ukraine has destroyed the Italian government and the great banker, filled with pride, has not been able to prevent it. It is one thing to know the dynamics of international finance and another to manage a parliamentary crisis. Draghi is not to blame for the loop that has turned his country upside down, but he could have prevented it. Too much arrogance, too much wounded pride for not having been elected President of the Republic.
Italy always advances things. Classic fascism nested in the gangs of mutilated and resentful combatants that Benito Mussolini knew how to lead with great sense of smell after the First World War.
After the Second War, the country was framed, for almost half a century, by two great mass parties, the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party, both led by cold intellectuals. They fought and understood each other. When those two great organizations faded into the background, the king of commercial television entered the scene. They no longer included the factory, the parish center, or the party section. Society was mentally framed by the television talk show. Snake charmer Silvio Berlusconi invented Trumpism before Donald Trump.
Cold intellectuals left the scene and their place was taken by a delirious succession of warm demagogues such as the comic Beppe Grillo , inventor of the Internet Party – the 5-Star Movement, now busted – the corsair Matteo Salvini , already imagining himself again Minister of the Interior, since he cannot aspire to more, given his servitude to Moscow, or Georgia Meloni, the rising leader of the national right, the girl from the neo-fascist youth, a very harsh speaker when she breaks out, as was recently verified in Marbella , in the Andalusian electoral campaign. Meloni dreams of occupying Draghi's position after the legislative elections yesterday called for September 25. Could occur.
It can happen, since the Italian electoral law today benefits the right. The law known as Rosatellum establishes that 37% of deputies and senators are elected by the majority system in colleges with a single candidate, which benefits the best organized coalition. The terrifying collapse of the M5E leaves the Democratic Party practically alone before the assembly of the three right-wing parties, unless there is a great regrouping of forces in the coming weeks. The pro-Europe coalition versus the grand populist coalition.
That may be the September campaign cut. The war in Ukraine is gaining scale and the Po River already empties into the Black Sea.
