Mario Draghi's
first meeting
with his Government last Saturday at Palazzo Chigi lasted forty clock minutes.
Sobriety, seriousness and to the point as the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) likes.
Draghi has had to accept, despite himself, setting up 23 ministries to ensure the support of six parties, but he showed from the first meeting who is going to rule and that he will not allow any minister to prevent him from sleeping at night.
"Unity is not an option, it is a duty," he ordered them.
When political fragmentation makes management impossible, Italy unapologetically turns to non-militant figures and even more so when it comes to taking advantage of the 210,000 million European funds that it will have at its disposal.
When
Silvio Berlusconi
was about to lead Italy to an impossible rescue,
Mario Monti's
solution emerged
and now they have turned to Draghi.
Zapatero tells in his memoirs how he looked at Spain's risk premium every day and its differential with that of Italy, because the further away he was from Berlusconi, the less pressure for Spain to ask for the rescue.
However, at the Cannes Summit in November 2011
Angela Merkel
He asked Spain and Italy to consider going to the IMF, but ZP was already in office and the then Finance Minister
Giulio Tremonti
replied: "I know better ways to commit suicide."
Indeed, it was better to give up power in favor of Monti.
Draghi, at 73 years of age (25 more than
Pedro Sánchez
), generates confidence in the markets and just by coming to power he has already cut Italy's risk premium by 30 points.
And pay attention to how it narrows distances with Spain, which took Italy more than 60 basis points last month and now has reached 32, 50% less.
That without Draghi having even begun to govern and despite the fact that his country presents investors with 40 more points of debt!
than Sánchez's.
Italy's risk premium already fell to 90 points on Friday (it was at 120 in the days before Draghi appeared).
while Spain's has continued at 60, and Portugal's - always ahead since its Iberian neighbor - around 50. However, Italy's debt ended 2020 at 160% of its GDP, Portugal's, in 135% and that of Spain, in 120%, according to Brussels estimates.
This means that the markets see it more feasible for Portugal to repay its debt than Spain and that they trust Draghi more than Sánchez, in proportion.
The increased reaction of the independence parties after the Catalan elections this Sunday does not help the image of solvency of Spain either.
The rise of the Italian is in any case good news for the Eurozone.
"He puts his immense reputation at the service of Europe," one of his advisers at the time at the ECB,
José Manuel González-Páramo
, told this newspaper
.
«With the support of the European markets and institutions, the qualities of Draghi must now be combined to be successful in a field that is not in which it operates more comfortably.
His achievements, even if they were partial, will redound to the benefit of Europe, ”says the current IESE professor.
Draghi also adds undoubted pressure on the policy of the Sánchez coalition government.
The Italian is in favor of increasing public spending to combat the pandemic, but always with a plan to reduce debt and control the deficit.
He would never sign a petition for debt forgiveness like the president of the PSOE, Cristina Narbona;
and he is in favor of European funds being conditioned on reforms.
The appointment of an entire former president of Vodafone such as
Vittorio Colao
as digitization minister, or
Renato Brunetta
, obsessed with increasing the productivity of civil servants, in Public Administration, are first signs.
In addition, since he was obliged to create ministries to secure support, Draghi dedicates a specific one to recover tourism, which Sánchez has not done with an almost as broad government.
But both countries have it difficult.
The European Commission points out in its latest forecasts that “although some member states will already see their pre-crisis levels by the end of 2021, others will take longer.
This is, in particular, the case of Spain and Italy, because they are not expected to reach those levels by the end of 2022 ”.
In other words, Brussels believes that everyone will have resolved the crisis in two years except Spain and Italy, but it did not yet count on Rome's reaction and the Draghi effect in its forecast.
According to
Bloomberg
, banks like Barclays already "advise investors to bet that Italian bonds will perform better than Spanish ones."
The ephemeris
VARO AND PURSE
Two years after the one who was the founder of Podemos,
Juan Carlos Monedero
, reappeared in rallies with
Pablo Iglesias
in the 2019 campaign, it transpires that he was working at the same time as a consultant for a real estate fund.
Of the 139,000 euros of income detected that year in the Monedero accounts, the 58,300 paid in July by Gat Spain Legacy stand out, according to a police report sent to the judge investigating the Neurona case.
Gat belongs to
Rosauro Varo
, who is very topical as he was elected director of the Prisa group and considered a consensus between Telefónica and Banco Santander.
Varo is building a relevant business group and takes care of his relationships on the right and left, but, according to the report, he was the only businessman who hired the highly controversial Monedero for consulting in 2019.
The report does not point to illegalities in it, but it is striking.
Character
LAPORTA WITH JAVIER BOTÍN
In addition to visiting Barcelona supporters' clubs and fans, the candidates for the presidency of Barcelona have to advance in meetings with bankers, if they want a future after a possible victory.
One case is
Joan Laporta
, one of the main aspirants to win the club elections scheduled, in principle, for March 7.
He has already held several meetings with financiers in the last month to see how he can get liquidity and save time with the debt slab of 1,173 million that the club drags.
Of these, no less than 730 million expire in the short term.
Laporta has already met, among others, with
Javier Botín,
whose JB Capital fund is one of those specialized in financing football clubs in the EU.
Ana Botín's
brother
does not particularly like football, but he does like its profitability and he had a first contact with Laporta.
It's not going to be easy money.
To follow
MONEY FIRST, THEN THE PLAN
The four-day workweek project progresses at rates of a little while a week.
Let us remember that this was born because
Carmen Calvo
agreed to launch a pilot project in Spain financed by 50 million public money in exchange for the vote of
Iñigo Errejón
for the decree of European funds.
The Ministry of Industry received Más País to explain what they want to do - normally it is the other way around, and it is the Government that details plans to the opposition - and they have agreed to meet again at the end of March, given the greenness of the affair.
Errejón had his first known meeting on Thursday with the first company that has implemented it in Spain, the Jienense Software Delsol, and he says that he must do a round with companies before deepening with Industry.
The normal thing would be the other way around.
First, a serious study and then it is decided if it is financed with 50 million, but not in the hectic world of Calvo.
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