What's happening in Italy?

Next post Thursday November 10th

I’d like to spend some post to explain what’s happening in Italy and what is actually Italy, because I believe that due to some political reason I do not what to consider, Italy’s image is under attack. And it’s is fair to clarify what is actually bad and what it is distorted by the international newspapers and magazines which do not like our premier and tend then to fire against the whole nation.

We are not an easy country. It’s a matter of fact: reliability can be an issue and the honor that was once one of our founding values is no more so… widespread like in the past.

We like the easy life and it is almost true that even in the middle of this storming crisis, restaurants are overbooked and you can’t easily find a vacation spot. Is this due to a general welfare or, more likely, to a prevalent unawareness, a sort of  unperceived unconsciousness?

We have been taught by our politicians, by our trade unions, by the advertisements, by the televisions that we are a good people, that we deserve everything and that we just have to step up and take it. This was done for several reasons: politicians –most of them, independently from the party they were in-  wanted to be elected again and rule. Trade unions wanted to reach their goal and increase their power. Advertisement…. well  you know.

So we ended up believing that we just have rights and no duty. And that is a true issues nowadays, in a middle of a hard crisis.

But on the other hand we survived a lot of crisis and there is one reason: we are truly different from any other western country. Not better, not worst: just different.

When you consider the economy of a country you look at the stock exchange, you look at the main groups and you consider what they are doing.

Well Italian companies, which as I already wrote, are mainly family companies, are not public companies. Less then 10% of the Italian companies are quoted at the Stock Exchange Market. Now how can you tell the state of our economy just cheching what’s happening at piazza Affari?

We can look naives and our creativity can be considered manipulation or a perennial ageless trial to survive difficult times without planning: do we really live thanks to  “expedients”?

It might be, but that creativity helped us to survive so many difficult times we learnt from it how to manage any hurdle. That’s why we are growing much more that it looks like.