If risk culture is indispensable for growth

Uncertainty is now a constitutive trait, as is the risk that it does not always make calculable. But the culture of risk is an indispensable corollary to that of growth, especially if the risk is assessable, in a sense predictable.

This is where economist Caselli, a great connoisseur of the mechanisms of finance, comes in: it is with the culture of investment (and thus also of calculable risk) that a country grows in a sustainable and lasting way. But for this to happen, it is necessary to increase the share of savings channelled into productive investments linked to the real economy and research. In this action, it will be up to the state to play the role of multiplier agent, especially in setting the rules for markets that are otherwise always prey to moral hazard, especially since in Italy the share of private savings is over 6 trillion lire. A similar role will fall to the banks, by nature enablers of growth and bridges between savings and development.

Only by mobilising substantial resources will it be possible to correct the welfare imbalance, looking at the fate of the increasingly elderly and the increasingly marginalised young people in the labour market.

Huge resources means looking at the European horizon at least. Because only the continental scale will make it possible to plan the (colossal) investments needed to ensure that Europe continues to be the land of the welfare state that leaves no-one behind.,

For Caselli, it is time to overcome old prejudices such as the one that sees the stock market as opposed to the banking market, which sees the banking market as the place for supporting businesses and the stock market as the place for speculation. Or like the other that sees banks and companies as being opposed, which instead only in a common path can give the best for the growth of the country system.

Nothing is simple, everything requires compositional efforts of different if not opposing interests. Above all, Italy needs to realise that it has a lot of power (financial resources, data, artificial intelligence) but still needs (and a lot of) power, i.e. governance, management and leadership.

It means the ability to innovate the control mechanisms of companies (in the delicate balance between board of directors, management and shareholders, for example), the role of the state also as an actor in the economy and innovation (not just managing shareholdings with an accountant's eye), the culture of companies that is towards innovation and not conservatism.

Only in this way, with this acknowledgement, can Italy and also Europe become protagonists again in planning the future. Otherwise, one of the worst risks that Caselli fears is that one day someone will come up with the idea of using huge private savings simply to cover the chasm of public debt. And to tell the truth, perhaps someone is already thinking about it.