Shedding skin to change nothing: notes on the transformation of the Italian banking system

Abstract

Italian financial capitalism still retains a peculiar and path dependent structure, produced by the events that have shaken the economic system, starting from the state intervention to rescue the banks after the 1929 crisis, and which still produce their long-term effects today: it is a “bank-centric” system, where credit institutions retain a prominent role in the collection of savings and in their allocation to productive investment activities. Our economic system retains some traditional traits, even if grafted into the profound transformations of financialization that have invested the capitalist systems. Deep transformation process of the Italian banking system has therefore left a quasi-monopolistic position of the banks in the management of household wealth and in loans to non-financial companies and a lack or underlying weakness of financial instruments unable to fuel the birth and development of innovative companies in favor of the transformation of the country system.