Hugo Dixon

The markets are too sanguine about Italy. The country’s politics and economics are messed up – and there are no easy solutions. And while Rome does have the European Central Bank as a backstop, it may have to get to the brink before using it.

Investors had jitters after last month’s election result, pushing 10-year bond yields up to 4.9 percent from 4.6 percent. But by last Friday they had fallen back to 4.7 percent. Investors have convinced themselves that some political solution will be cobbled together; that, if one isn’t, it doesn’t really matter; and that, if the worst comes to the worst, the ECB will pick up the pieces by buying the country’s bonds.

Mario Draghi, the ECB president, gave some support for the latter two ideas last week. He downplayed the risks to Italy’s fiscal position by arguing that much of the country’s belt-tightening was on “automatic pilot”. He also made clear that the ECB’s bond buying plan was still available for countries that followed the rules.

But messy politics and economics could make each other still messier. Months of political paralysis will squash investment and could dampen consumption. That will exacerbate the recession. Fitch Ratings – which downgraded Rome’s debt to BBB-plus from A-minus on Friday – thinks GDP will shrink 1.8 percent this year. A deeper recession, meanwhile, means a worse fiscal position. The ratings agency expects government debt to reach nearly 130 percent of GDP this year.

Political stalemate also means Italy won’t get to grips with its long-term problems. The country has barely grown in the last 20 years. Even Mario Monti’s technocratic government did little to address problems such as inefficient bureaucracy, red tape, cartels, a dysfunctional legal system and inflexible labour markets.

When euro zone governments agreed last year to give the European Central Bank the power to supervise its banks, that looked like another victory for its president Mario Draghi. It is more like a poisoned chalice.

The ECB will certainly get a chunk of extra power. But it will also be blamed when banks run into trouble, as they inevitably will. Draghi himself is experiencing this first hand following the scandal at Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), which has had to be rescued by the Italian state. He has been lambasted for failing to supervise the country’s third largest bank properly when he ran the Bank of Italy – although the criticism seems overdone and has often been fuelled by his political opponents back in Rome.

The potential reputational risks for the ECB from banking snarl-ups on its watch are probably even bigger than they are for national central banks. This is because it doesn’t yet have the full set of tools to do the job properly. Moreover, a huge amount is at stake since the ECB is the euro zone’s most credible institution. If its reputation gets tarnished because of perceived supervisory failures, that could rub off on its ability to conduct monetary policy or manage crises effectively.

Who is Europe’s most powerful man? If one phrased the question as who is Europe’s most powerful person, the answer might well be Angela Merkel. But the deliberate use of the masculine excludes Germany’s chancellor, leaving the field open to Mario Draghi.

This answer can, of course, be disputed. How can one compare power in economics with power in, say, religion? Is it possible to rank the technocratic European Central Bank boss on the same scale, for example, as the Pope?

The best place to start is with an attempt to understand what power is. Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, said it was the production of intended effects. By contrast, Steven Lukes, one of the top contemporary power theorists, said in an interview last week that power is the capacity to make a difference in a manner that is significant.

The European Central Bank’s bond-buying scheme has bought Spain and Italy time to stabilise their finances. But if they drag their heels, the market will sniff them out. It will then be almost impossible to come up with another scheme to rescue the euro zone’s two large problem children and, with them, the single currency.

Mario Draghi’s promise in late July to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro has already had a dramatic impact on Madrid’s and Rome’s borrowing costs. Ten-year bond yields, which peaked at 7.6 percent and 6.6 percent respectively a few days before the ECB president made his first comments, had collapsed to 5.7 percent and 5.1 percent on Sept. 7.

Most of the decline came before Draghi spelt out last Thursday the details of how the plan will work. What makes the scheme powerful is that the ECB has not set any cap to the amount of sovereign bonds it will buy in the market. The central bank’s financial firepower is theoretically unlimited, whereas the euro zone governments’ own bailout funds do not have enough money to rescue both Spain and Italy.

Can Super Mario save the euro? Mario Draghi said last Thursday that the European Central Bank’s job is to stop sovereign bond yields rising if these increases are caused by fears of a euro break-up. While this represents a sea-change in the ECB president’s thinking, it risks sowing dissension within his ranks. He will struggle to come up with the right tools to achieve his goals.

Draghi seemingly stared into the abyss and had a fright. Spanish 10-year bond yields shot up to 7.6 percent on July 24 while Italian ones rose to 6.6 percent. The high borrowing costs are not simply a reflection of the two countries’ high debts and struggling economies. Investors also fear “convertibility risk” – or the possibility that the euro will break up and they will get repaid in devalued pesetas and liras.

The central banker’s statement that dealing with convertibility risk is part of the ECB’s mandate is therefore highly significant. He rammed home his message, saying: “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.”

The Super Mario Brothers need to work together to save Italy and the euro.

Even if Mario Monti can form a strong government in Italy, the euro zone is vulnerable to bank runs and a deflationary spiral. Stopping that is the role of Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank’s boss. The zone needs vigorous supply-side reform but looser monetary policy. With Silvo Berlusconi gone, the duo and Germany’s Angela Merkel should try to forge a new grand bargain based on this.

Last week witnessed both the Italians and the Greeks dragged to the brink, look into the abyss and dislike what they saw. The two countries have or are in the process of forming national unity governments led by technocrats. This is a step in the right direction. But dangers abound.

The biggest risk is of a visible bank run. There has already been massive deposit flight in Greece as savers fear that the country could get kicked out of the euro – a scenario which is still real despite Lucas Papademos’ appointment as prime minister. But so far there have been no queues outside branches as there were with the UK’s Northern Rock in 2007. If that were to happen, television pictures would be relayed across Europe in seconds potentially provoking copycat runs.