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Comments- The total refusal of vulnerability, the spread of contracts, the pacts crisis
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire on 24/06/2012

The biggest difficulty we face in order to come out of the crisis doesn’t lie in the choices made by the institutions, or in politics in Europe, but in our lifestyles which in these last few years have undergone a radical change.  This is the reason for the difficulty in finding a way, because while we complain with words, our behaviour increases day by day that very model of growth against which we raise our voices and which brings much suffering to many (although not to all).  This is perhaps the greatest paradox in this phase of Capitalism.
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Let’s take insurance companies as an important example.  In looking for the common good, it is evident that insurance has an important function:  the possibility of being able to insure oneself against risky and uncertain events generally betters the wellbeing of people and the common good.
A hypothetical world without insurance would be worse from all points of view and would be worse especially for the most fragile parts of a population.  But, as in all good things in life,  knowing  the right measure is crucial, and being able to pinpoint the limit or critical point of no-return in order to keep that good from becoming evil.
Regarding this, we should reflect more on that rising phenomenon which we could call “World Insurance,” that is, the progressive and rapid enlargement of the area of social life covered by insurance contracts.  We don’t see this only with auto insurance, which in a few years has gone from a simple RC to coverage for vandalism, unforeseen atmospheric events, or to the need of a technician in order to mount snow tires in the case of a sudden snowfall.  We also see it much more often in the fact that teachers have to insure themselves against any possible accident during school trips and many other events.  ‘Well……’ someone might say that, with these insurance policies we are able to do many more things than if we didn’t have this coverage.  Attention though! “I say,” because during this process, as well as raising the not so little cost for families, it tends to wear at the interpersonal relationships, and create always greater insecurities which will later cause other contracts to be proposed to us and so forth.
But there’s more.  If a citizen knows that that particular place in social life is covered by insurance, data, as well as our experiences, tell us that there is likelihood the insured will increase the number of claims, court cases and conflicts.  As long as we are talking about vehicles, all of this, even though serious (as insurance companies know well), deal with areas not always central or crucial to our lives.  But if this phenomenon (suing, demands for damages, moral suffering, etc…) begin to extend and include the areas of health, school, and civil life, its effects could become very serious, as is happening and can be seen already.  Let us not even mention the logic that lies at the base of the ‘’derivative titles” that come from it (one of the major causes of financial instability) which are sophisticated forms of insurance (or better, bets) where profits are made over people’s tragedies.
Finally, insurances’ hyper-coverage produces another effect which enters into the heart of social and relational life.  Some years ago a fire destroyed part of a home belonging to a friend of mine.  A few friends began to arrive with offers of help, but as soon as they realized he was insured, they  happily returned home, knowing that ’someone else’ would take care of it.   What a pity, given the time that would have been  spent with one’s friends in rebuilding  a home,  which could be an investment of relational capital, which then produces fruit in other areas of our lives, a capital which the hypertrophy of insurance today tends to attack and reduce.  In this way, our social capital (as well as financial) diminishes, increasing solitude, and the market steps in to offer new contracts for other unstable events (one day we will insure ourselves against not being respected enough, or loved enough by colleagues and family members!?), precipitating us in a social trap in which the effects are much more serious for the poorest who will suffer along with everyone the deterioration of civil patrimony, but who don’t have the possibility of insuring themselves financially.
What to do then?  I see two paths, one internal and the other external to the insurance world.  We should not forget that insurance came about as an instrument to protect those who are most fragile and vulnerable: at least, that was the original intent.  There is the need today to re-launch a new season of insurance ethics, in the wake of the Nobel laureate M. Yunus, who is now inventing insurance for the poorest, with premiums of only a few dollars.  Insurance societies should by nature be civil enterprises, that is, without intent to profit, simply because the contracts they sell have to do with a primary good, to protect against a bad and devastating vulnerability, and make it more liveable; a good that is fundamental to every person and it is not just to speculate on fundamental rights of people. This is not rocket science (science fiction?) (as one would say today of those leading huge insurance companies) but liberty and democracy.
 
The second pathway is more a cultural one than an ethical one:  we must react to that dangerous dream of wanting to build a common life ‘with relational risk 0’, because this dream can swiftly transform itself into a nightmare. Civil life is made of contracts (including those devised by insurance providers), but is primarily comprised of pacts (family, citizenship, and work), and a pact cannot avoid a certain vulnerability, since pacts are made of trust, and true trust is always open to risk and betrayal, otherwise it doesn’t do any good or serves too little.  But this dominant culture no longer understands what risk means and that suffering is inevitable in living alongside others ( as families well know), and so runs after a monstrous and naive dream of a world without vulnerability, an illusion which makes the individual truly vulnerable in the face  of monumental  suffering.
Only by welcoming and making space for the small vulnerabilities of life in common, will we be (as happens in homeopathic medicine) able to protect ourselves from the big vulnerabilities of our existence; if instead we refuse to welcome the small and ‘good’ vulnerabilities and wounds, we will be very defenceless in the face of the big vulnerabilities which devastate us once on the scene. The good insurance contracts are subsidiary to the pacts, the bad contracts substitute them, deteriorate them and in the long run destroy them. Today we will come out of this crisis with more pacts, with less bad contracts and more good ones, also in the insurance industry.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Comments- The total refusal of vulnerability, the spread of contracts, the pacts crisis
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire on 24/06/2012

The biggest difficulty we face in order to come out of the crisis doesn’t lie in the choices made by the institutions, or in politics in Europe, but in our lifestyles which in these last few years have undergone a radical change.  This is the reason for the difficulty in finding a way, because while we complain with words, our behaviour increases day by day that very model of growth against which we raise our voices and which brings much suffering to many (although not to all).  This is perhaps the greatest paradox in this phase of Capitalism.
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Comments - Beyond the GNP, with civil capitals
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire on 29/04/2012

Mario Draghi has also launched an appeal for a «pact for growth,» Angela Merkel is also becoming convinced that it’s a matter of necessity. It is becoming increasingly clear to many – and thank goodness, also to many influential people – that to base ourselves solely on the «fiscal pact» is not only too little, but runs the risk of further deteriorating the economic situation of the more fragile European nations. Growth, therefore: but growth of what? Without embracing the radical thesis, and at times naive (above all, in the  therapies that it proposes) of the so called de-growth, we need to be aware that the most important question on growth is really «of what?». When we think of growth, we normally think of growth in GNP.
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And we error, because, even if we never say it, this crisis was also generated by a mistaken growth in the GNP. In these last decades, in fact, the GNP has grown too much and badly, since it grew – and grows – at the cost of the natural, social, relational and spiritual environment, augmenting the hypertrophy of speculative financing. In Italy and in Europe in crisis, the GNP has since grown thanks to an abnormal growth in the public debt  - it is too comfortable and irresponsible to make the GNP grow by increasing the cost of public administration.

Today we have no guarantee that re-launching our GNP means also to increase the number of jobs and the wellbeing of people, since if the growth would continue to be guided and drugged by financial speculation, and therefore by income, the life of Italians would certainly continue to worsen even with a few extra points in our GNP. As we know it today, the GNP is not an indicator of human wellbeing in general (and this we know), but neither is it a good indicator of economic wellbeing in the era of finance (and this is less known).  If we want to measure the good growth well, we need to reform the GNP and, above all, to compare it to other indicators, which however – and this is the point – need to be indicators of stocks and not of flows (as is the GNP).

In what sense? The concept of «Gross National Product» was born in the 1700s in France (with Physiocratics), with the genial and revolutionary intuition that the economic strength of a nation does not measure its capitals or stocks but the annual income (therefore a flow), since a nation is not rich because it has mines, oil and forests, but only if it is capable of putting these capitals «into income», which depends on many factors (persons, technology, culture…). And from there we arrived to the 1900s and the birth of the GNP, continuing to think that for the wealth of nations, the flows and stocks are what count. However, today that beautiful ancient idea risks being misleading. 
Even though wanting to leave its value to an indicator of flow (a new GNP), it is more urgent that the stocks and capitals return to occupy the core of the economic, social, and political scenario.  The environmental theme, but also the relational and social ones – dramatically central – are formed by stocks and not by flows, capitals accumulated throughout millennia (or millions of years, in the case of the environment), that today the race to increase income flows is damaging and deteriorating. 

If we want and we must re-launch growth, then we have to concentrate on the growth and the maintenance of these forms of capitals: if they were not strengthened, maintained and in many cases recreated, the economic flows would not start up again; or, even if they were to start up because drugged by the finance market or European funds, they would continue to fuel the crisis of our time.

It would be enough to think of the impoverishment of those ancient civil capitals that are called neighbourhood relationships, or of proximity, and of that “productive correlation” of territories that until recent times have generated the many experiences of cooperation and of industrial districts of “Made in Italy.” The deterioration of these capitals is determining the progressive sterility of our civil fabric, which is not able to generate other flows, nor cultural, nor spiritual or economic. 

In order to be able to rebuild, and soon, these indispensable capitals, we first need to know how to see them, and then perhaps to measure them, giving life to new measuring tools of stocks or, better yet, of patrimony, a word that better denotes because, if meant as patrum-munus, that is, the gift of the fathers, it symbolically reminds us that we have received these patrimonies as a gift from passed generations, and therefore we have to protect and develop them, if we do not want to be remembered as the first ungrateful generation in history, the one that broke the big chain of inter-temporal solidarity.

And we cannot allow ourselves this, in order to today re-launch the good economic growth.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Comments - Beyond the GNP, with civil capitals
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire on 29/04/2012

Mario Draghi has also launched an appeal for a «pact for growth,» Angela Merkel is also becoming convinced that it’s a matter of necessity. It is becoming increasingly clear to many – and thank goodness, also to many influential people – that to base ourselves solely on the «fiscal pact» is not only too little, but runs the risk of further deteriorating the economic situation of the more fragile European nations. Growth, therefore: but growth of what? Without embracing the radical thesis, and at times naive (above all, in the  therapies that it proposes) of the so called de-growth, we need to be aware that the most important question on growth is really «of what?». When we think of growth, we normally think of growth in GNP.
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Comments - Banks, Europe, use of resources
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 28/12/2011
Finance and the economy are too important to be left with financiers and economists. I believe this could be summed up with the message that comes from the second and conclusive part of 2011. We noticed, and with more force than the first phase of the crisis (2008-2009), that the stock market indices and the “spread” are not distant affairs and are matters for experts, but are able to change the governments, our family budgets, and our life plans. So we all must address this situation, ‘living’ ever more in these places because if they remain inhabited by the citizens for a long period then they become inhuman. This crisis sends us three specific messages. The first relates directly to the banking world. Recent studies (University of Ancona: mofir.univpm.it), revealed that after September 15, 2008, banks have reduced lending to businesses, also to those virtuous.
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This apparent inefficiency depends on the distance of the place where decisions are made and where the business operates. Banks are more distant and do not have the knowledge of the area, therefore the decisions are handled by objective indicators that do not show essential things that become visible only to the eyes of those who live in the area and know the people by name.
The first message that comes to us then is the need to ‘reduce the distances’ between the places of decision making and the places of living. Then a financial policy critique that strongly wanted the concentration of banks of those big, remote, and anonymous that has been the watchword of the last two decades. It is interesting to note that local banks are holding up better to its vocation in the crisis. All this suggests a kind of golden rule: give citizenship rights in everyday small and fragile relationship (waste time with the customers, invest resources in relationships that are not always financially rewarding, etc.), which makes them less fragile when big crises arrive. Instead, do not accept these fragile daily ‘crises’ because they make the institutions more fragile in front of the big crises.
Then there is a second clear message regarding Europe, who is now living the deepest crises since its foundation. If no one will put a hand on a true political union, the Euro will not stand much longer. Today, however, they are lacking the great statesmen of the postwar period, and their place can and should be occupied by citizens. It is up to them, it is up to us all to ask, from the bottom and with greater force, to have a more regulated politics and finance.
Finally, the third message: there is something wrong with capitalism which we have given life, especially in the West. This ‘something’ has nothing to do with finance and perhaps not even with the economy, because it plays on a much deeper level of our culture. The crisis we are experiencing is like a fever, an indication that something is amiss in the body. Because fever lasts for a long time and temperature rises, it should be taken seriously. There are at least two pathologies that are cared for. In the last decades we have robbed the environment, hurt it and humiliated it. Within just a couple of generations we are consuming a wealth of oil and gas that the earth has generated in millions of years, and in depleting these assets we are also hurting the atmosphere. All this says that we have messed up one of the foundational relationship of our existence, that with the earth and nature. And when an important relationship like this does not work, it is impossible that the other relationships work, as shown by the growing intolerance in our cities, increasing solitude, and how the relationship still largely shows the marauding with the resources of the African people, where every day they perpetrate new ‘slaughter of the innocents.’ The second cause of the fever is the growing economic inequality in the world, also thanks to the finance revolution. Without economic inequality, that does not only play on the profitability axis but also on work, the principle of equality is too abstract because people cannot achieve the life they want to live. Equality is the second word of modern triptych, and denying it signifies denying also the other two, for equality, liberty and fraternity have to be together or not one is authentically achieved.
Europe will rediscover itself if it will be able to give life back to Humanism of three dimensions, from which will also bloom ‘public happiness’ at the center of the program of Modernity. As Antonio Genovesi, an eighteenth century economist from Naples, reminds us, “it is the law of the universe that we cannot make our own happiness without making that of the others.”
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Comments - Banks, Europe, use of resources
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 28/12/2011
Finance and the economy are too important to be left with financiers and economists. I believe this could be summed up with the message that comes from the second and conclusive part of 2011. We noticed, and with more force than the first phase of the crisis (2008-2009), that the stock market indices and the “spread” are not distant affairs and are matters for experts, but are able to change the governments, our family budgets, and our life plans. So we all must address this situation, ‘living’ ever more in these places because if they remain inhabited by the citizens for a long period then they become inhuman. This crisis sends us three specific messages. The first relates directly to the banking world. Recent studies (University of Ancona: mofir.univpm.it), revealed that after September 15, 2008, banks have reduced lending to businesses, also to those virtuous.
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Comments - Three fragility and too much indecisions
The right path is difficult
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 06/09/2011


As Italians and Europeans we must have the courage to come to terms with the reality. Behind the stock market crisis and markets around the world there is a triple fragility of financial capitalism (too much debt), the European policy, and Italy. For two or three decades this season of globalized capitalism has generated growth through private and public debt and a highly risky creative finance (for the system, not the actors), is coming to an end. Too bad that markets are still not able to choose and take a new path. And that same operation does not succeed, despite the increasingly explicit appeals to the Quirinal, leaders and key sectors of our politics, our union and significant parts of the civil society.
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The call that made us turn is eloquent and strong, but unfortunately it is not systematically listened to, not understood and even misrepresented. Uncertainty and mistrust reigns as supreme, and after a few puffs of oxygen it goes back underwater again, waiting for the next storm.
It has now been two months that the crisis is acute and we have not yet seen a G20 summit, only semi-private phone calls, meetings in two, statements that would be reassuring (which often produce perverse effects). The politics is showing itself incapable of governing the first serious crisis of globalization. The economy and the world have changed, but the categories in which the political, national and global read and act on it (or not act) is outdated and therefore ineffective. There is, of course, a specific Europe crisis, which is experiencing the first great age of the euro fibrillation: market operators are no longer sure that the Eurozone is capable of the future. The empty and useless statements on the Tobin Tax, the proposal to postpone the sender of Eurobonds (which are not realistic because behind the Euro lacks a strong unified European policy), the repeated uncertainties of the European Central Bank, much is said and always more confused and inadequate ideas.
But it is enough to look, at these times, the titles of major newspapers and international websites just to be convinced, if there is still a need that in this European and worldwide crisis of stock exchanges there is a big and heavy question mark on Italy. The uncertainty and constant change of the contents of a maneuver are increasing the negative expectations of the financial operators, who after a couple of weeks of waiting they begin to manifest devastatingly their serious doubts that our country really has the resources, first moral then economic, to do for itself what is necessary. It is really sad to see the hesitancy of our ruling class to immediately start and share those few reforms, perhaps unpopular, but essential, that would give confidence to markets and honest citizens. It is unthinkable to clean up the huge debt without putting real effort on pensions (primarily the question of intra and inter-generational equity), without asking a fair and well-modulated extraordinary contribution to those who can give it because of the possibility and convenience (instead of imagining the alternative that of taxing the remittances of care takers and domestic workers: it is a stroke of genius to ask sacrifices for our debt to those who did not create it and, with their work, make life better for millions of our elderly and children), without a drastic cost reduction, not so much of "politics" (politics is something high and serious), but of political bureaucracies. Not to mention the tax issue, for the family and against evasion, of which so much has been said here already.
We are very late, perhaps too much, and the signals for necessary things to be done are few and weak. But it is in hard times that everyone must demonstrate the ability to act within the limits of power and responsibility one has. Among these uncertain actors there are also of the European institutions, our closest relatives: if Italy is really too big a country to declare default, then some slap on the back and some consoling words at the bedside is not enough. But, as in any good family, relatives are not involved in a concrete way if the one in need does not first demonstrate seriousness and commitment to solve their problems. "Only you can make it, but you cannot go it alone,” recites a nice variation of the subsidiarity principle, one of the pillars of ethical and political Europe.
We need Europe more, but - first - we need Italy more, more government, more political, more civil and economic society, beginning with those who have most at heart the common good. But there is also a need of greater power of ideas: we cannot live this time of crisis waiting for it to pass. Also because it will not pass, unless we indicate and even cry out the need for a “new economy,” to save the civilization  called “market” that it may be able to articulate itself in a just and supportive manner, beyond this capitalism.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Comments - Three fragility and too much indecisions
The right path is difficult
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 06/09/2011


As Italians and Europeans we must have the courage to come to terms with the reality. Behind the stock market crisis and markets around the world there is a triple fragility of financial capitalism (too much debt), the European policy, and Italy. For two or three decades this season of globalized capitalism has generated growth through private and public debt and a highly risky creative finance (for the system, not the actors), is coming to an end. Too bad that markets are still not able to choose and take a new path. And that same operation does not succeed, despite the increasingly explicit appeals to the Quirinal, leaders and key sectors of our politics, our union and significant parts of the civil society.
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Comments – What this World Youth Day leaves
Both future and present, maybe it's time of the youth quota
by Luigino Bruni
published on the Avvenire on 23/08/2011
 It was impressive to see in these days, the stark contrast between what happened at the WYD in Madrid and the turbulence, uncertainty and fears of the markets and politics. The stage was always the same: Europe and the world, but how different the feelings, the excitement, the scenery, the colors, the joy. On one hand, the weakness and inadequacy of politics, the dominance of the strong powers of finance, the lack of growth and development, the great debt also due to the lack of hope and confidence were celebrated; on the other, life, hope-faith-trust (fides), enthusiasm, the joy of living were celebrated. In fact, those young people and this church do not live on another planet; they are no less concerned and involved from the economic-financial events of these difficult times: what is profoundly different is the "look," and the point of view from which we observe the reality.
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Young people, in fact, are not only, as is often repeated (a little paternalistic) the future of our society: they, also and above all, live and interpret the present, today, and the history in a different way. Young people have a perspective on the world, eyes that see things different from those who no longer is young or not yet. The young people were at the head of the largest movements of epochal change: the young fathers of the resurgence, young protagonists of '68, and millions of young citizens who for thirty years with the WYD are changing the world in their own way.
There is now a big global "youth question," which is also one of the causes of the crisis, ethical as well as economic, we are experiencing. Not only that young people remain more and more outside the world of work (more often one finds work when no longer young), but they are outside the places that matter, from the economy, politics and institutions, to the point that we had to invent associations of young industrialists, young entrepreneurs, young political parties… as if to say that normal economics and politics are matters for the older. We are loading them of unsustainable public debt, plundering the environment, and above all with our cynicism, we are depriving them of hope, which is the fuel that powers life, more especially, the youth.
We (finally) agreed that there should be female quotas in the board of directors of large companies, because we realized, data in hand, that in firms where female genius is at work there is not only humanity but also more efficiency and wealth. When will we establish "young units" in businesses, economics, politics? Young people, in fact, bring enthusiasm, generosity, prophecy, courage that are essential foods for any good society, and that when they are missing everything becomes dark and sad. Of course, in a decent society there would be no need of either female quotas or youth quotas, but today in Italy and much of the old west, we are still far from this decency, and similar artificial mechanisms may serve democracy and development.
The economy is a piece of life, so it keeps all the vices, but also all the virtues and passions, this is why without the young protagonist neither the economy nor the society will function. Perhaps this is also one of the messages to what has happened in Madrid these days.
see more comments by Luigino Bruni on the Avvenire: Listen to young people, choose well. The Tobin Tax lost for 10 years (19/8/2011) A Nice Long Road (12/8/2011)  The Deadly Embrace (7/8/2011); The Cows of Finance and Us (2/8/2011); A Jubilee for Italy (24/7/2011)
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Comments – What this World Youth Day leaves
Both future and present, maybe it's time of the youth quota
by Luigino Bruni
published on the Avvenire on 23/08/2011
 It was impressive to see in these days, the stark contrast between what happened at the WYD in Madrid and the turbulence, uncertainty and fears of the markets and politics. The stage was always the same: Europe and the world, but how different the feelings, the excitement, the scenery, the colors, the joy. On one hand, the weakness and inadequacy of politics, the dominance of the strong powers of finance, the lack of growth and development, the great debt also due to the lack of hope and confidence were celebrated; on the other, life, hope-faith-trust (fides), enthusiasm, the joy of living were celebrated. In fact, those young people and this church do not live on another planet; they are no less concerned and involved from the economic-financial events of these difficult times: what is profoundly different is the "look," and the point of view from which we observe the reality.
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Comments - To regain trust (and sense) for a new fair market
A Nice Long Road
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 12/08/2011
Behind the crisis we are experiencing there is, above all, a grave crisis of confidence. No one knows any longer where to find reliable investments; therefore they sell stocks preferring cash (or gold and safe havens). Today it is clearer than ever how true that the word credit comes from “believe,” from trust. In 1936 the great British economist J. M. Keynes well described, in its essence, what is happening now, a phenomenon that depends very little on sophisticated financial instruments and more on simple psychological mechanisms: we have fallen into a "trap of negative expectations," a situation in which a serious crisis of confidence (in this case in the public debts of "sovereign” States) that the workers have strong preference for liquid assets and lack of confidence in financial stocks. And when one falls into these traps, the only effective policy is to recreate that missing trust, recreate positive expectations. The current capitalist economic system does not have - and here is the point - anthropological and ethical resources before techniques, in order to raise these expectations, because they lack cultural perspectives to the challenges posed.
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In times of crisis, the memory is always an important resource to imagine and draw scenarios of hope. Trust comes from the Latin fides, a word that means confidence, reliability, tie (rope) and religious faith. I trust you, I will give you credit (you are credible), because we share the same fides, that faith which was the main guarantee of reliability and loan repayments, especially when trading with strangers. On this fides-trust-credibility-reliability-bond-faith, the first European single market between the fourteenth century and modernity was born. With the Protestant Reformation fides enters in crisis, the rope breaks (Christian fides was no longer enough for businesses and for peace), then Europe found new forms of trust in order to support the emerging markets: it is in fact in the seventeenth century that central banks, stock exchanges, which became the new “secular” guarantee of the new fides-free market. Parallel to these new economic institutions the national states were also born, which became the new "places of trust," the great safeguards for markets and currencies, as were the cities in the Middle Ages. This brief historical overview is just to say that the secular modern economy comes from a very close relationship between economics and national policy, between finance and national states. Behind exchanges and finance there were the states, peoples, ethnic communities, territories, affiliations. The political and economic democracy as we know it was based largely on national markets and economic institutions. This national capitalism, in its two great Anglo-Saxon and European versions, has held up until a few decades ago, when we entered in a more accelerated way in the era of globalization and financial capitalism.

This crisis is telling us that we still do not know nor understand nor govern the globalized capitalism, because while the economy and finance have changed radically, the policy and its instruments are still those of early capitalism, including creation of huge public debt without control and guarantees, an expression of ancient idea of sovereignty of nation states and seigniorage. Not to mention the tax issue: to fight tax evasion seriously we should at least acknowledge that there is a mega "tax issue" and of justice that plays in the global financial markets, where they create huge profits and returns that escape tax systems and are still too anchored to the national dimension, which may be used as ex post to the dangerous and immoral trick of amnesties.

In Europe, the euro is in deep crisis because we have not found a relationship between euro and Europe. Credibility always remains an effect of a single country (it will not be a coincidence that the Milan Stock Exchange is almost always the worst!), but it is not crucial to understand and deal with the crisis. It is enough to observe that the guarantees offered by Obama in the U.S. have become inadequate. In reality, it would need a political dimension of globalization, a policy that does not yet exist nor does one have a glimpse of. A new Bretton Woods world would be necessary to give life to a post-capitalist economy market where finance is regulated and taxed as (and perhaps more than) all income-generating activities, where one creates independent authorities of controlled public debt, where one regulates also the governance of multinational large firms (some of today's richest and most influential of small nation-states), and much more. That's why in this crisis the new market economy in the era of globalization is in play, which should be different from what we have created thus far. The global financial economy needs trust but, as in the case of energy, it consumes without being able to recreate, because its tools create reputation (which is a normal market good) which tends to displace the trust (which is instead a relational good).

What is certain today is that the old politics based on national governments, partisan balance and sovereignty no longer works. What will emerge from this failure we do not know: we can only predict a few years of fragility, systemic risk, uncertainty, and sacrifices for all, hopefully with bit of fairness. And we must above all raise the hope which is the great virtue in all times of crisis, it is the fertile ground from which even confidence can flourish.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
 
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    [text] => 
Comments - To regain trust (and sense) for a new fair market
A Nice Long Road
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 12/08/2011
Behind the crisis we are experiencing there is, above all, a grave crisis of confidence. No one knows any longer where to find reliable investments; therefore they sell stocks preferring cash (or gold and safe havens). Today it is clearer than ever how true that the word credit comes from “believe,” from trust. In 1936 the great British economist J. M. Keynes well described, in its essence, what is happening now, a phenomenon that depends very little on sophisticated financial instruments and more on simple psychological mechanisms: we have fallen into a "trap of negative expectations," a situation in which a serious crisis of confidence (in this case in the public debts of "sovereign” States) that the workers have strong preference for liquid assets and lack of confidence in financial stocks. And when one falls into these traps, the only effective policy is to recreate that missing trust, recreate positive expectations. The current capitalist economic system does not have - and here is the point - anthropological and ethical resources before techniques, in order to raise these expectations, because they lack cultural perspectives to the challenges posed.
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Editorial – Middle Class and the Capitalism Crisis
The Cows of Finance and Us
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 2/08/2011
Based on a perceived economic equity, impoverishing the middle class will unravel the social bond.

The agreement reached on U.S. public debt must not excuse us from deeply reflecting on excessive indebtedness of North American economy and of the capitalist system. The 2009 big bank bailouts primarily moved the private sector debt to the public sector, without removing the real causes of the problem, which find themselves in the U.S. and world middle class that is progressively impoverished and in debt. Behind the large public debt there is an inequality problem in income distribution that is becoming ‘the’ crucial question in our capitalist economic system.
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In the fall of 2008, when the crisis was about the explode, the 1% GDP share owned by the richest U.S population reached its peak, just as in 1928, at the dawn of the great Wall Street crash, as Robert Reich reminded us in his latest, valued book (Aftershock, Fazi, 2011). When the middle class is impoverished relative to the affluent class, it tends to borrow too much, also because now, unlike in 1929, the financial system proposes and promises magical recipes to maintain or increase, with debt, the levels of consumption.
In the past decades the attitude towards inequality had been ambivalent: part of the public and scholars’ opinion saw it basically as a transitional phenomenon, a price to be paid only in the early stages of the economic development. Albert Hirschman metaphorically expresses it with the image of the tunnel: when we are in a tunnel blocked in a traffic jam and if the lane next to me starts to move I can suppose that my lane will also start to move. The inequality, therefore, should have had an inverted U-shape: growth at the beginning then diminishes at the mature stage of capitalism.
The historical event of the West (certainly U.S. and Italy) tells us that in the last 25 years inequality has increasingly returned. How come? Were the forecasts of the economists wrong? In reality, a brand new factor was inserted, which is the financial nature of the last capitalism that send into crisis the same theory and ideology of the free market. In fact, when the helm of the economic system (and political) passes into the hands of speculative finance (here the adjective is important, finance is not all the same), some of the pillars of liberalism enter into crisis, including the market’s ability to ensure economic growth, for at least three reasons.
The first has to do with the kind of wealth that is created by financial speculations. The golden rule of the “normal” market economy (when funding is subsidiary to the real economy) is the mutual benefit of the parties that exchange; when, instead, we are often dealing with speculative finance the rule is of the ‘zero-sum game,’ just as poker: the winner correspond to the losses of the others.
This means that many of the latest generation of finance instead of creating new wealth moves it (especially by playing with time) from some individuals to others. Second, in many (not all) speculative finance happens systematically, without scandals and convictions. What we have recently seen with soccer bets: some players (large funds) bet on the outcome of the games (future value of securities) and then play in a way that their expectations (bets) will come true. The third reason directly deals with inequality. The financial turbo capitalism naturally produces high inequality because, thanks to labor and technology globalization, workers of average skills (laborers, employees, and care and service agents) always pay less. That is, the big part of the middle class, while strategically-pays the few hyper-specialists (technicians and managers) are able to exponentially increase the profits of finance.
But – and here lies the crucial point – an economic system that enriches too few and impoverish the middle class, the great majority of the population (to say nothing of true poverty, another crucial topic) does not grow. The social bond that is based on a perceived economic equity unravels and begins inexorably to the decline mainly due to a lack of “demand” (not just equity). In fact, an increase of middle and lower class income is immediately translated into a higher consumption and GDP, while increasing income of those who already have much produces very minor effects on consumption and growth. We are then realizing that when workers are poorer relative to other social groups, the inequality becomes a direct factor of growth (or recession). The rhetoric increase is no longer enough for the “size of the cake” before thinking about the ‘slices,’ because on one hand the increase of the cake may only be apparent, and on the other the squandering and the waste of the big cake eaters makes it indigestible even the smaller pieces of the others.
When one watches our capitalist system from afar, the first strong impression one can draw is that we have grown too much and evil: the environmental crisis says it with more eloquence, but it also says that this growing inequality is a result of over-milking the cows of finance, which today risks to kill the animals to exhaustion. The tool to rebalance the economic relationship is not called charity or philanthropy but tax system. That is why family-friendly tax proposals (like the “family factor”) is a purely economic matter before becoming an ethical proposal, because without rebalancing the social deal we will not have the energy to re-launch growth, reduce public debt and construct a better economic system. For this I must make my own the words of hope with which Reich concludes his speech: “In the United States, as in Italy, we will reverse the course that threatens our economies and democracies. We will do it so that this inversion is in everyone’s interest, even those in our societies who have enormous levels of power and wealth. … It is our challenge and our children’s. It is the biggest economic challenge we are facing.”
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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    [text] => 
Editorial – Middle Class and the Capitalism Crisis
The Cows of Finance and Us
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 2/08/2011
Based on a perceived economic equity, impoverishing the middle class will unravel the social bond.

The agreement reached on U.S. public debt must not excuse us from deeply reflecting on excessive indebtedness of North American economy and of the capitalist system. The 2009 big bank bailouts primarily moved the private sector debt to the public sector, without removing the real causes of the problem, which find themselves in the U.S. and world middle class that is progressively impoverished and in debt. Behind the large public debt there is an inequality problem in income distribution that is becoming ‘the’ crucial question in our capitalist economic system.
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