Beppe Grillo's Blog

"To the President of the Italian Republic

I asked for this meeting, and I'd like to thank you for the promptness of your response. I wanted to meet you to be able to tell you directly about my worries for the economic, social and political situation of the country, as I'm convinced that urgent and extraordinary measures, equal to those of a war economy, can no longer wait, even one more day.
Italy is en route to catastrophe. Those who are governing the country today are the ones responsible for its destruction they are the same people who have destroyed the economy. This political class is not capable of resolving any problem. They themselves are the problem. The Government of Broad Agreements, that you were strongly in favour of, is just protecting the "status quo" and Berlusconi's interests. In any other western democracy, Berlusconi would not be allowed to hold any public position, and he certainly wouldn't be allowed to sit in Parliament. The Nation is a pressure cooker that is about to explode, but for the last few months the Letta Government is amusing itself with postponing the IMU property tax and reducing the sales tax by one percentage point without finding any solution. The figures demonstrating the collapse are visible to anyone who wants to look and they are dramatic. The unemployment rate is the highest it's ever been since 1977, the constant collapse in industrial production that will be at minus three per cent in 2013, the continual rise in the public debt that has reached 2,040 billion euro, the collapse of companies that are closing down at a rate of one a minute, taxation levels that are the highest in Europe, both for companies and for individuals, salaries that are among the lowest in the EU, the collapse of consumption, even food products, and debt levels experienced by families. It's a disaster like we had at Caporetto and there's no one at the backup position on the River Piave. They are all in the grand buildings postponing decisions and making announcements. Parliament has been deprived of its functions. The electoral laws dubbed "Porcellum" {pigswill} is unconstitutional and the parliamentarians have been appointed by a handful of party secretaries. The Government is making legal decrees without allowing a minimum of time to scrutinise them and Parliament is approving as commanded. For some time now, we are no longer a parliamentary republic, and we are perhaps not even a democracy.
The public debt is devouring us. We are paying interest on it amounting to about 100 billion euro a year, and that's growing day by day. Just this year, so as not to go under, we'll have to sell public bonds to a value of 400 billion euro. State revenues are about 800 billion year, and of that, one euro in every eight goes to pay off the interest on the debt. Our leaders Berlusconi, Monti, and Letta have not managed to put a stop to the spiral of public debt, that is growing at a rate of 110 billion a year. The interest payments on the debt and the fall in tax revenues due to the mass collapse of companies, to unemployment and to the collapse of consumption, represents the certainty of a default soon. There's no choice. The public debt has to be restructured. The annual interest payments will do away with social expenditure, investment and research. It's as though we were in "The NeverEnding Story" where "The Nothing" consumes reality. The interest on the debt is eating up the social State. It's possible to stay within the euro, but only renegotiating the conditions. This can be done either by issuing eurobonds that I believe is essential, or alternatively by restructuring our debt and that would above all have an impact on Germany and France that hold most of the 35% of our public bonds held abroad. We cannot collapse for the sake of the euro. No one can ask us to do this - nor oblige us to. At the end of 2011, 50% of Italian State bonds were held by foreign bank or institutions. Since then, our banks have bought back about 300 billion from abroad and this includes bonds about to become due and then re-issued to the market. They did this thanks to last year's loan from the ECB, a loan guaranteed by the States, including the Italian State. They did this instead of providing credit to the companies. And it's come down to 35%. That's the best way of going bankrupt. When we've bought back all the foreign debt and we no longer have any industrial capacity, we will collapse and the EU will stand and watch, as has happened in Greece. Now that we have power to negotiate, we must use it now.
Italy has an absolute need to help the small firms with measures like cutting the Irap tax on production, with taxation on a par with the European average, with services that are efficient and less costly, with the protection of the "Made in Italy" brand to cover only what is actually produced in Italy and with the possible application of import duties on certain products. At the same time there's an urgent need for bringing in a "citizen's income". No one must be left behind. We are worried about the world's problems when we cannot manage to give assistance to older people and when we are not offering work to our young people who have to emigrate in their hundreds of thousands.
Measures like the citizen's income and the revival of SMEs are possible immediately by cutting the thousand privileges and useless spending. Listing a few.
Cut out the provinces, bring down the maximum for pensions to 5,000 euro, cut out public financing to the parties and the newspapers, return the handling of public concessions to the government, starting with the motorways so that it's the State coffers that are raking in the profits and not private companies like Benetton, or in cases where this is not possible, re-negotiate the conditions, eliminate political bureaucracy from companies with State ownership (even partial) where thousands of directors are prospering, nationalise Monte dei Paschi di Siena, eliminate every big useless public works project like the Tav in Val di Susa and Expo in Milan, drastically reduce the salaries and benefits paid to parliamentarians and people in every public position, cancel the mission in Afghanistan, stop the purchase of the F35 jets. I could go on and on. These measures cannot be taken by the current political class because they would cut through the branch of the tree that is holding them up.
This Parliament has not been elected by the Italian people, but by the parties and the lobbies. It cannot tackle a situation of national emergency, of a war economy, because it owes its allegiance to its masters and not to the citizens.
Thus I am asking you to force the repeal of the current electoral law as it is unconstitutional, to dissolve Parliament and have elections once more. Autumn is approaching and with it the probable collapse of the economy. The problems will see a transformation from political to social, and they will probably be uncontrollable. There's no time left. You have willingly carried great responsibility at a time when you could have and maybe should have rejected it. By now, you have become the shield, the lightning rod of the parties that have not known how to govern, how to reform themselves and who can be considered, at best, incompetent. This is not your task, which is to represent the interests of the Italian people." Beppe Grillo