The ESM enterprise
Sorry if I neglected you: it happens often lately, but this time I believe that, more than others, you can understand and appreciate the reasons.
As I remember telling you in a live broadcast, I have known what I would vote for twelve years, what we would have voted for a few months, how we would have involved the others, to prevent our vote from remaining a sterile act of testimony, a few weeks, and through which parliamentary route we would get to the point, to avoid the ambushes of friends and enemies, a few days ago. These few weeks and days have been particularly intense, as you imagine. Let's add the fact that instead of being able to rest on the experience of Riccardo Molinari, by a happy accident of fate, on 21 December 2023 I was having my first experience as group leader, due to the absence of Riccardo, his deputy Iezzi, and the deputy group leader Dean Bruzzone. For this reason it was up to me to communicate the party line to my colleagues, even those involved in the Commission, which seemed particularly significant to the information operators, but was a mere technical accident. The decision was, as it should be, collegial, and I certainly don't have to explain to you that things are exactly the opposite of how the information operators report them (they would suffer too much to know that they had allowed themselves to be trolled to the max by one of their favorites…).
Such a delicate vote, around Christmas, had its uncertainties, not for anything else, but because between political commitments in the area and authorized leaves (including those due to illness, because the flu is spreading and those exposed to the public get it) at group sixteen parliamentarians were missing. You will understand that we couldn't even make a call to arms, not even in our internal chats! For the reasons I explained to you in one of the latest live broadcasts, this one:
it could not be excluded, in principle, that if the message of absolutely being in the courtroom had been insisted on (which in any case had already been given two days before), perhaps explaining why, someone could have passed the news on to some information operator. Better not to lead anyone into temptation and to unite the ranks in secrecy and without particular emphasis.
Luckily I could count on two pillars of the fray like Edoardo Ziello and Simona Bordonali, the room delegates. They helped me recover some of the lost sheep, and keep an eye on the abacus, at least until the outburst from a maniac with a clucking voice, of whom I didn't quite understand what he wanted, but of whom I remember well how he acted ( in the room where the logigadibaggheddo was born, which is Chigi's on the corner of Via del Corso, there were three of us and I was one), finally made us understand that we would have had the numbers anyway (which, to tell the truth, the treacherous Borghi had been maintaining since the previous day: one of the many reasons why I was restlessly calm).
So good.
Now the greeting cards have been sent (only 499, because I forgot the one for Pierre Gramegna: I'll fix it on the 27th), the gifts unwrapped, the senders thanked, the broth and ragù are on the stove, the kitchen is in order (obviously the wife finds something to complain about: "Are you writing the Christmas post?" But it's enough to go from Gramegna to Gramuglia to settle the disagreements), now that everything (or almost everything) is in order, in short, I can return here, to the infrastructure of the Debate, in the blog that doesn't exist of the community that doesn't exist, but which, fortunately, Claudio with great tactical intelligence has given visibility at the right time (because yes, it must be said and remembered: twelve years of work would not have been useful to no avail if they had not been made visible at the right time, to reconfirm the fact that being right and knowing the "truth" is of no use, in itself…), I can return, I was saying, to put a few dots on the "i ", to help you understand what you will find in the packaging of the gift that isn't there: the ESM, which someone would have wanted you to find under the tree, and that someone else (I think you know who, otherwise you wouldn't be around) he made it disappear.
The defeat of the defeatists (aka #ppdm)
One thing is certain: after the vote on 21 December 2023, the defeatists no longer have excuses, and above all they have no dignity as interlocutors. Things are exactly as the Avicennian says :
The convergence of the zerovirgolist narrative with the mainstream one should not surprise us: we know how to recognize a gatekeeper when we meet one!
It was exactly this that allowed us, for example, to understand that the 5 Stars could not build a credible alternative to the system (I explained it to you on 30 July 2012 , receiving barrages of insults), that they would inevitably ally themselves with the PD (I prefigured it on 6 September 2016 , to general disbelief), and that this turning point would have exposed the country to a serious risk: and in fact, after the Giallorossi government, Draghi arrived!
Now, I know some #ppdm personally: I know how much they are worth (not much), and I would be sincerely surprised, and even a little annoyed, if I learned that someone had bought them! But I know it's not like that: it doesn't work like that (this is what, despite more than a decade of effort, I can't make you understand). Buying certain stuff is not necessary: it is not necessary in the lowest way, as in these cases, nor in the least low level (think for example of the whole world of information operators). The problem is almost never the subjective intentions, whether genuine or perverted by venal motives, of people. The problem is almost always objective dynamics, such as that which leads information operators to spread poor quality information because only those who do not have qualified information have an incentive to give themselves importance by spreading the little they know. As for the defeatists and their inane trifles, whose manifestos are constructed by copying and pasting my posts from eleven years ago, they are objectively on the side of the PD, because they objectively gnaw at the votes of the weakest or most opportunist among our potential voters, opening up space for the election of Piddini parliamentarians. We saw it happen and yes, things are as Samuele says. They are very afraid and their little game is clear: to attract the greatest number of votes to more or less attractive "flicker lists", with the decoy of anti-politics, to take them away from the only political force that is in some way revolutionary, for the simple fact that involved those who understood and made you understand how things are: Antonio, Claudio, Marco, and of course the "infrastructure manager" (me).
Now, until before December 21st, this line of argument could be opposed with the vulgar argument of "just chatting, sicceroio…"!
But on December 21st we crushed, with our "chatter", that is, with our work of cultural and therefore political involvement, a reform that everyone now considered inevitable, and above all, beyond the (very significant) merit of the provision, we gave plastic evidence of an essential methodological problem: you can say no!
Finally, the words I had heard, a long time ago, from a Brussels official found a concrete outlet: "Here there is only one thing that holds them in respect: a Parliament with a solid majority that votes against them!"
So now the zero virgolists of "eh, but they're just talking, sure enough I'd show them!" they are dead, razed to the ground by a double counterfactual: to the most usual ("Tell me, mama's boy, how come it is that since you are so good you are not there, but I am?") a new one has been added second, tombstone ("Daddy's little love, and how would you have reached the required majority with your four parliamentarians on the cross?").
Dead.
Sorry, but your only hope is us, and whoever involved us, namely the unpresentable Salveenee. The presentable would have gladly sold you: you will have to make do with what you have. Keep us (I was writing "fear us") to account, and support us, because from today onwards there is only zero relief for the defeatists.
Time and works
This does not mean that I do not want to go into the merits of the particularly en vogue nonsense in the court of miracles of non-fucking fuckers, of non-thinking intellectuals, of people leaders without people, in short: of #ppdm!
The first, frankly, is ridiculous: the idea that "eh, but then after the European elections they will present it to us again and then you will vote for it!" Of all the ways to demonstrate that you don't understand what you're talking about, this is the most degrading to those who indulge in it. After the European elections, the parliamentary groups will have to be formed, an operation that cannot be taken for granted, the details of which are set out here (at least 25 parliamentarians elected in at least a quarter of the member states, etc.: in short, quite a sudoku). Then we will have to vote for the President of the Commission, and we will therefore have to see who will vote for the unsuccessful von der Leyen, and what path he will follow to justify it to his voters. Then the European Commissioners will have to be chosen, who must have the approval of the Commissions. Then there will be a vote of confidence in the new Commission. Then summer will come, and then the budget law. And do you really believe that a newly elected Commission would begin to insist, even if it were technically possible, on an issue on which such an authoritative Commission (as we are told) is still picking its teeth from the ground, after the slap it took? Come on, dears: it means not understanding how the world works, and it also means not reading Goofynomics. The ESM, among its many defects, at least has the merit of being useless. This is why the markets do not mourn the lack of reform and will not mourn its liquidation: because market people are practical people, people who know how things are. Where a real crisis breaks out, the only stability mechanism is the one equipped with unlimited firepower, the one that exists in every civilized country, and the one that when things get bad we are forced to use here too: the Central Bank (vi I explained here, in point 3, that this awareness is also clearly expressed by the European institutions) . The ESM was just a tool to impose conditions on national economic policies, but even in that it is outdated: now there is the PNRR. So, honestly, enough nonsense, right!?
Then there is the other line of argument of the "siceroi", the heroes of the "siceroio": "Eh, but you sold the country by accepting a very penalizing reform of the Stability Pact, it would have been better to trade the reform of the ESM in exchange for less penalizing budget rules! Yes…". I feel better! I would start from the assumption that any rule, that the very existence of the notion of a rule, is in itself disturbing, is a failure of reason and politics. A failure of reason, because the scientific debate on "rules vs. discretion" is an ancient debate, very seventies , a debate that today makes you smile a little, as bell-bottom trousers would make you smile outside of a cosplay elephant, and which in any case did not reach definitive conclusions. A failure of politics, because all the talk about rules essentially leads back to one point: the mistrust of Northern electorates towards other European peoples. On the basis of this alleged ontological difference, which has long and dating back cultural roots, it is naturally impossible to build anything solid. As long as someone asks for rules, by the very fact that they are asking for them, we will therefore have the certainty that the European project is short-lived, and this in an absolutely independent and preliminary way with respect to the quality of the rules themselves (to which I would also add for completeness the other totem word: reforms), and even if the rule advocated was "do as you please!" and the desired reform "be yourselves!"
But I understand that this seems like philosophy, and so I'll get concrete. You don't have to explain to us that these rules are penalizing for Italy (and for other countries), or at least they seem so at this stage of the negotiation (there still has to be a trilogue, etc. etc.: if you want to be informed, inform yourself !). However, there is a detail that seems to escape many. The alternative was to choose between a concrete and immediate threat and a possible and deferred threat. The ESM reform provided elements for an immediate attack on the Italian public debt, as you know (the details are here , but in summary: in the new ESM the restructuring of the Italian public debt was easier, the markets knew it and would have started to unload the our securities, it would have taken very little to trigger an attack). We'll see what the new rules will be when they come into force. Our 2024 maneuver is proof of old and new rules (I don't understand those who talk about a summer maneuver, to be honest: but I will certainly be wrong…), then there will be the elections, then we'll see. It was the French who asked for a four-year "grace" period, in a desperate attempt by Macron not to be razed to the ground at the deadline, considering that the situation of their fundamentals is terrible and therefore restrictive measures should apply to them too. Naturally, Macron will be razed to the ground anyway, but in the meantime we can carry on. If you had, I know, we would have all moved to the top of the earthly paradise. Since we were there, we did what we could, and I think that will be enough for the moment.
I don't even want to comment on the unspeakable nonsense about the fact that negotiations would be more difficult now: it's only by making yourself respected that you get respect. The PD's natural inclination towards a ninety-degree bend has not brought any tangible benefit to the country that I can remember. If you have different memories, you can correct me in the comments.
Import-export
As I clarified on Radio Cusano:
it is not on these insipid counterfactuals that we need to focus our attention, but on the interaction between the political geography of the European and Italian Parliaments. The Draghi government was an attempt to import the Ursula scheme into Italy. What the PD wanted (and I know this because one of them was sent to tell me, yes, sent by me, by the irrelevant parliamentarian that no one considers… but of whom not only journalists are afraid!) was that we let us abstain on trust and stay out. In this way FI could have joined the left without too many hesitations, with an operation à la Nazareno , and the PD would have sunk into your freedoms and your wallets like a hot knife in butter. We prevented this: the import attempt failed when the entry of the League created a dialectic between the centre-right and the "government" centre-left. It cost us a lot. Some, more accustomed to measuring consensus by reading newspapers, did not expect this exorbitant cost. I did, with a few others in the political secretariat (Siri and Ceccardi, among those who spoke out). Precisely because I expected the costs before, I am able to see precisely afterward the advantages of this experience, because there were also advantages. With FI in the majority and us in opposition, the cadastre reform would have passed, and this is neither fantasy nor ideology: it is numbers.
Now the scheme has been completely reversed: the attempt to import the Ursula majority into Italy failed thanks to us, let's see if the attempt to export the centre-right majority (three parties) to Europe will succeed thanks to us. It will not only depend on what happens here in Italy, where it is obvious that the best hopes for change are only given by those who have demonstrated that, in addition to decades of analytical capacity, they also have a minimum of political capacity. It will also depend on what happens in other countries, where our allies within the ID group are growing in consensus, while other fringes of the center-right are finding themselves in greater difficulty. We know well that in the Government in Germany there is a Social Democrat who will one day go down in history as the one who crumbled his own party (mark it down, so if it doesn't happen you can hold it against me). Of course, however, as long as this does not happen, the problem remains, which I have mentioned several times, of the extreme difficulty of a misalignment between the color of the Government in the hegemonic power and that of the Commission. A problem which, insofar as it emerges clearly, will at least have the merit of clarifying to the many unaware people what world we are in: in a world in which all voters are equal, but some voters (the German ones) are more equal than others, even if in the meantime they have changed their minds and today they would vote mostly AfD!
Who wouldn't want to live in a world like that?
Fewer and fewer people, I think.
It's up to us to help them.
I'm about to conclude…
The vote on December 21, 2023 was a historic vote. There are no other cases of a "no" pronounced by the Italian Parliament on a matter of similar importance, nor, to tell the truth, on a matter of lesser importance, except for some votes in Commission XIV, to which the European bodies usually respond with a sneer. . But a failure to ratify cannot fail to be acknowledged.
"MES" is the twenty-first most important tag in our tagcloud, after "elections" and before "orthoptera": all posts with MES tags can be found here .
The oldest is from December 19, 2015, and originated from an interview with Lars Feld by a person I don't even want to name, having reminded the courtroom of the depth of his professional ethics. In that interview Feld stated that to resolve the crisis of the Italian banking system triggered by Vestager's decisions on Tercas , decisions later deemed illegal by the EU courts at two levels of judgment, Italy would have to draw on the ESM (which then only existed in the current, unreformed version). I would really suggest you re-read that post .
But it has been before, since 2012, following the fateful phone call from Lidia Undiemi ("Professòòòòòòòòre!") that we have been dealing with it here, to question its function in the architecture of the Eurozone , as Sandro did on 12 August 2012, to outline its role in placing political decisions "sheltered from the electoral process" , as Cesare Dal Frate did on 24 September 2012, to highlight its redistributive function from the periphery to the center of the Eurozone , as I happened to do on 27 December 2012.
The result we achieved by overthrowing his reform, by subjecting to the "electoral process" an institution that was believed to be shielded from it and which was created, after all, to inhibit it, is incredible, if seen with the eyes of the time. Last night the algorithm brought me here , and, parva licet , I saw a logic, or perhaps an analogue, in this randomness. But the most important lesson we draw from this success is that for things to happen you have to believe in them.
Here we believed in it, and it is above all for this reason that, for once, I feel I must thank you: it is an objective fact that without your support, on the blog, in social media, in handshakes at our conferences, or simply in the midst of road, I for one would not have had the strength to believe it, to sustain the exhausting effort that Goofynomics cost me, an effort that I realize only now, when I realize that to write a few readable lines I have to spend a lot of time and concentration that I'm surprised I had in the past (and I won't dwell on the effort to organize our life together, starting with #goofy). Of course, in my previous life, writing brought me pleasure, and that's perhaps why reading to me brought it to you. Besides, they also provided me with playing music or going sailing. I am a curious person, and I have, or at least I had when I was older, a certain talent in facing new challenges. But just as I abandoned my musical career (the one that brought me closest to the truths I care about), or my philosophical career (the one that would have brought me closest to piddinitas), essentially because I had more curiosity about new horizons than confidence in myself, so, if your response to the cry of pain launched with Goofynomics had not been so immediate and unanimous, I would never have had the strength to persist. What allowed me to move forward, to expose myself, to go against my profession, to go against my environment, mostly composed of secretive "left-wing" intellectuals, what gave me the moral imperative to defend this trench, it was reading your words , understanding that this battle wasn't just mine, and drawing the necessary consequences from it.
Ours was the battle, ours is the victory. And now let's rest, because the war is not over.
Best wishes for a Merry Christmas to everyone, and a happy holiday to those who can.
God willing, we'll see each other again for the end-of-year post.
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2023/12/limpresa-del-mes.html on Sun, 24 Dec 2023 17:59:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.