Dialogue on the COVID-19 Pandemic Economic Crisis From Italy’s Frontline

Abstract

COVID‐19 pandemic in Italy is accompanied by an epochal economic crisis. One wonders what the real extent of the economic crisis is, what its consequences in the medium and long term, what the governmental interventions mean and how effective economic policies, implemented and announced, are. These questions dominate the debates of the observers and commentators, and they also crowded the writer's mind during the cloistered hours all are forced. While politics and mass media discussed all this, in the small of the A., old and recent students, some already established professionals, urged the A. with messages and e‐mails to take position and to communicate to them what his thought was. The result has been a dialogue and some reflections that today is submitted to readers. These reflections are proposed just as they were born, in the form of dialogue with students, inspired in this by the illustrious precedent of Dialogue over the two greatest systems of the world (1632) by Galileo Galilei. The A. is aware that, at some point, his considerations, like those of the illustrious scholar could appear like heresies, compared to the current consensus. For these aspects, three points are worth to be evidenced. The first point is the extent of the crisis which is here quantified as a loss of GDP between a minimum of 11% and a maximum of about 18%, contrary to the 6% of GDP forecasted by quoted international forecasting centers. The second point is the proposal of prosecution by the ECB of monetary policy in the form of Helicopter Money as the policy necessary to contrast the fall of individual incomes and expenditures. The third point is the activation by EU of a “European partnership policy” to save industry and firms from a liquidity crisis. The paper maintains the original format of a question from a hypothetical interlocutor, followed by the answer that exposes the A. thoughts on the topic.