Visco’s farewell after 12 years, the challenge of the crises and the values ​​of Bank of Italy: “Curiosity and knowledge” – Corriere.it

You can see from the details what kind of man Ignazio Visco is. Especially those who, in twelve years at the helm of the Bank of Italy, he never flaunted. Not only everyday details, also extremely revealing: the voracious reading of all the documents, the late evening outings from via Nazionale with a bag full of papers to study at home until three in the morning, the neatness of valuables — black or white, without shades — like a boy scout like the governor was as a child.

Even the second-level details, those invisible to most but which denote coherence with oneself, with ideas and with friends over the long term of life. In January, for example, the Bank of Italy edited the revised and enriched version of the writings of Albert Ando, ​​who died in 2002: born in Japan, raised professionally in the United States, Ando not only the economist with whom Visco took his PhD at Pennsylvania University in 1981; Governor Ando was also one of the best friends and an intellectual point of reference. Together with the Italian Nobel Prize winner Franco Modigliani, Ando had been the author of the first model for measuring the economy of the US Federal Reserve and Visco brought him to the Bank of Italy to do the same. You can bet that the governor spent his nights on his master’s bibliography, checking every last footnote. He said Gianni Toniolo, the great historian and economist who just passed away after publishing the first volume of the history of Bank of Italy (1893-1943) that Visco had commissioned from him: Luckily Ignazio read everything in draft: he caught me with some inaccuracies that I didn’t even understand how he managed to notice.

Why is man like this: loyalty to values ​​and friends, sense of historical continuity, a monstrous willingness to work and, of course, quite a bit of stubbornness. Pure ringworm. Maybe that runs in his blood, son of a Neapolitan father but a Sardinian mother, descendant of a very progressive and pro-republican deputy from Nuoro of the Kingdom of Sardinia and then of the Kingdom of Italy – Giorgio Asproni – whom the governor mentioned in his recent visit to Cagliari (with typical understatementswithout saying that he was his ancestor).

Sardinian or not, Visco’s obstinacy came in handy, to all of us Italians, during the repeated crises that marked his twelve years as governor. In the middle of the last decade it took a lot for the Bank of Italy to resist the siege to which a set of different forces subjected it during the banking crises: these were the times of the crash of Banca Etruria, before the showdown on the popular Venetian or the Monte dei Paschi. Then there were the rabble-rousers who incited against it Koch Palace any crowd, as long as it elected them to parliament. And there were the more subtle pressures that came from a political class – as often happens – arrogant. Visco defended his claims and built a wall around the Bank, limiting himself to making it speak with actions followed by sober reports on the site. An outdated man in this, very sharp, black-and-white again: not at all versed in manipulating public discourse from behind the scenes without leaving fingerprints.

But at no point did ringworm serve Visco (and Italy) as much as it did at the height of the euro crisis. on July 8, 2012, he was governor for nine months when he gave the Corriere the interview that lays the foundations for the turning point. Of the gradual exit from the nightmare. He says to Ferruccio de Bortoli, then director: The current spread of 470 basis points between the Btp and the Bund is two-fifths of our “fault”, our public debt, our lack of competitiveness, the low potential growth; the rest is a risk premium that the Italian State pays for the fear of the subscriber of its bonds that at a certain point the single currency will no longer exist. In other words, we deserved a spread of 200 points (more or less what it is now), the rest was pathology of the euro: Visco thus lays the intellectual foundations for curing monetary disease, shows the cost of the absence of a lender instance, which Mario Monti requested. Mario Draghi he would reply a couple of weeks later with Whatever it takes.

In this story, what matters today are the numbers: speak with the power of data in a country affected by mass dyscalculia (especially politicians). Bank of Italy in its pure state, this one: every time a governor mentions a figure, you can be sure that there are three Via Nazionale analysts behind it who have reconstructed the numbers in an original way and tested them several times. Yesterday Visco spoke of the need for curiosity, study, knowledge. He recalled Bonaldo Stringher, the first governor who asked for the most accurate analyzes possible to improve the fate of the country. The key to the next steps probably here. The outgoing governor will not go into private life, no bank chairs or similar, just a lot of writing and teaching probably. For the succession, many consider as a leading candidate Fabio Panetta, former general manager of the Bank of Italy and today in the executive of the European Central Bank; even Daniele Franco, former director general at Palazzo Koch and then minister of the economy, is seen by many as a suitable figure. The choice of the government and the Quirinale, but it will come only in the autumn. The styles and profiles are distinct from that of Visco, what doesn’t change the method of the house: solid and original data and facts, if necessary also different from those told by the current government. But not to make politics: To improve the fortunes of national activity, Stringher said in the year 1900 (quoted by Visco yesterday).

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