Brain Drain: Businesses and Brightest Minds Flee Italy

Farewell, ungrateful Italy. In addition to brain drain, we'll get used to the migration of entrepreneurs. The news coming from the North-East lab are not at all encouraging.

Until 2010 no employer has had the courage to leave Italian soil. A sort of waiting anxiety that charge went through the last part of 2008 and the two following years.

Explains Daniele Marini, a sociologist at the University of Padua and the Director of the North East: "Entrepreneurs have felt a great loneliness. And 720 of them already internationalized and holding sizes above the threshold of 10 employees, in 2011 the companies have decided to move abroad.

It remains to be seen how many entrepreneurs make the same choice in 2012.

Marini argues that choice in the book "Innovator of the Border", just published by Marsilio, "In the face of an institutional environment essentially static, ie where no desired reforms take shape, the government is not modernization, the level of taxation remains unchanged, the preconditions favorable to business life are reduced to such an extent as to suggest some to place in other countries where the fiscal and administrative environment allows them to remain competitive."

It is as if suddenly the toy was broken, cracks in the same constituent elements Venetian economy: the capital first of all, based on the triad family, capital, labor. Marini explains: "The crisis has changed the DNA of the North-East. A society that puts its identity in the work today is to consider it as a hassle. The families, however thrifty and highly oriented economy, fear of not having resources available to address such a long period of recession."

The summation of all these elements outline the framework that has led entrepreneurs "secessionists" to set sail.Credit Crunch Italian Style

Also courtesy of Google Translate, please consider The credit crunch? Ask the EBA

The solution to the crisis is growing. Virtually all agree on this. Even the Germans. The problem is that funding needed to grow. Especially businesses. But the credit supply to companies in Italy continues to be weak.

"They closed the taps, the banks have stopped doing," complained some time ago with emphasis Fancelli Mauro, president of the National Confederation of Craft Small and Medium Business in Florence.

The same bankers recognize the problem. "Not only have we reduced the new credits. But we're doing it furiously, "admits a senior executive at one of the five largest Italian banking groups.

The data reported by Mauro Fancelli for your region are dramatic: "In the first quarter of 2012 the bank has paid to Tuscan businesses for 33.5% less than the same period of 2011. The Monte dei Paschi di Siena, a leading institute in the region, has even been a decline of 70 percent."

"The worst of the credit crunch we have yet to see it," warns a second top manager at another establishment of the five largest in Italy.

With this investigation, Il Sole 24 Ore has wanted to find the reason for this phenomenon often referred to with two little words that English, along with spreads, are now common even in the chat at the bar: credit crunch - or credit crunch.Anecdotes From Italy

My friend Francesco writes ...

Hello Mish

The banks in distress list gets longer.

Two banks on chapter 11 by Bank of Italy in a few days. Last Saturday it was the turn to the Bank Credit Cooperative Monastier and Sile suffer to be placed under protection by the Financial Regulator. Last Friday was the turn instead of Tercas bank, savings bank in the province of Teramo in the meshes of the extraordinary finish.

A customer of mine have been required to close his position with that bank, he will never be able to repay its loans to 1.5 million eur in 4 months.

I expect a very difficult summer and in September, many businesses do not reopen. German firms will detect the best companies in the north east, at a very cheap cost, the other will close in a year.

In Italy we have two realities, Germany and Greece, in the same borders. The North, particularly the North East, has a GDP per capita equal to or higher than Germany, the South is in a worse condition than Greece. Obviously you cannot find the solution without reexamining borders.

I was on a business trip in Europe two weeks ago and my Italian colleague who was with me on the trip was so frustrated about the miserable economic situation in Italy...He told me that he pays 46% of his income in taxes plus he pays another 21% in VAT (Sales tax)...He said that the worst thing that happened to Italy and most EU countries is the EURO...

I understand his frustration with the EURO. By making a single economic solution throughout Europe, instead of having individual financial systems - the lowest performing member would bring all of Europe down.

Sort of like putting 50 people in an inflatable lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, and passing out pocketknives. Most everyone will take the pocketknife and put it in their pocket until needed - but some idiot is going to carve his initials in the side of the boat. I believe Greeks like carving initials in boats.

The ideology and idenity of globalism - elitist citizen of the world - is ultimately a dead end for the fleeing “smart” people.

They get an attitude of self-centeredness, materialism, carelessness and contempt when they don’t see territory as their own and a nation of people as their own team whom they care about. They can flee but eventually reality will catch up to them. It’s like running around the globe with your money, living life on the lam.

Correct. He also told me that with the Euro conversion prices of goods went up by 30% to 50% but their salaries were greatly reduced in term of purchasing power when they converted from the Lira to the Euro. It happened to almost every country who adopted the EU except, may be, Germany.

He told me that when he goes on the internet to compare the prices of goods between the US and Europe he gets shocked that the price of almost any goods are much cheaper in the US compared to the EU.

Remember that the northern Italians have long struggled under the tax burden from Rome, because they are hard working and industrious, and have turned into a cash cow for the south.

Not too many years ago, they tried forming a secessionist political party that was brutally suppressed by the Italian government, who raided the meeting with a lot of police, and arrested all its leaders.

But perhaps it was their timing that was off.

Today, with Italy rapidly approaching a time of Greek-level chaos, northern Italy should again consider secession, as a means of divorcing themselves from the inefficient and greedy south.

I truly doubt that the Italian government was successful in destroying their movement, rather than driving it underground. But such movements can continue to gain strength far more by word of mouth than they can with open meetings.

Tell ‘em that the economy in Houston, Texas is doing just fine.

I am seeing a lot of oil exploration, drilling, and refinery related sales.

The freeways are crowded with 18 wheelers and hotshot trucks. We actually MAKE things in Houston.

Y’all come to Texas! We have the friendliest regulators in the USA. When I talk to State employees, they are always friendly and helpful. GW Bush and Rick Perry created that customer oriented culture. No state income tax either. Franchise tax is zero for companies with sales under $1M.

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