Technological development and the web have brought about tremendous progress, but also created an oligopoly and turned the market into a casino. The financier is convinced of this Francesco Michelialways considered one of the leading experts, spoke at Economy Festival which opened yesterday at Trento. “In a few decades – he said – there have been a series of impressive revolutions, which neither the political class nor the ruling class have been able to provide. This triple revolution (globalization, web and development of telecommunication techniques) has meant that a formidable progress has started. For internet finance it was something pervasive, but it had a regressive effect », underlined Micheli. «Before – he observed – there were markets with a plurality of players, from which important growth dynamics came. The web, on the other hand, has created a concentration in a handful of entities, absolute powers that control all markets and that have, in fact, transformed a market with a plurality of players into a single market, in which a single thought is formed. They have created an oligopoly ».
In the financial field, however, today we are on web 3.0 made up of Bitcoin, NFT and blockchain “and this is driving finance crazy – warned Micheli, a protagonist in the past of great battles in Piazza Affari – Bitcoins are not coins but a financial asset” . In short, «we live in a casino where we all play all the time, when we run out of chips we go to the cashier and they give us more. In the end, the only one who saves himself will be the one who will bring the chips to the cashier and take real money, not Bitcoin, and therefore will get off this infernal carousel ».
At the four days of the Trento Festival, from yesterday to Sunday, Nobel prizes, economists, managers, entrepreneurs and a dozen ministers are expected to discuss the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, policies to deal with the emergency, new geopolitical balances and, as far as Italy is concerned, the opportunity created by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Edmund Phelps, Nobel laureate in economics in 2006 and director of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, has clearly blamed the decline in the rate of innovation in economics in recent decades. The West and its governments, he said, “require a new vision, it is necessary to reconceive the economy, so that people can also reconceive their working life”. «From 1970 onwards – explained the economist – innovation has decreased, first in Germany, then in Great Britain and, subsequently, in Italy, the USA and France. And as a result, the rate of productivity growth has slowed down sharply since 1995. At the root of the crises was above all a lack of innovation “and” the economic cost caused by this loss is the new stagnation affecting the workers who had put in account a salary that has steadily increased over time “. So, according to Phelps, “we need a better society to have a better economy.” Finally: «Individualism is a modern value – specified the Nobel Prize – and should not be confused with selfishness. Individualism is pride in one’s personal development. Individualism is to be independent, to follow one’s own path ».
Also noteworthy is the intervention of the former Minister of Economy, Giovanni Tria. “There is a risk that some phenomena get stuck between Europe, the United States and China, leading to a stagnation of the global economy,” noted the economist. “The corrections on the forecasts – he continued – indicate that the economy is getting worse but, for the moment, the expectations are not for a recession”.
The debate between the jurist was particularly intense and applauded Natalino Irti and the Nobel Prize in Physics Giorgio Parisimoderated by the journalist Paolo Mieli, on the «world to come».
Finally, opening the Festival, the cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, shifted attention to ethics and spirituality. “We live in an age in which the bulimia of the means corresponds to the atrophy of the ends”, Ravasi warned. “Let’s think about technology, information technology, science. On the other hand, however, how little we ask ourselves about the meaning of life ”, were the words of the cardinal.
Markets, it’s web alert 3.0. Micheli: “They have become a casino, crazy finance”