Quote from Bernd Bergman:

Hostility towards globalization is not the exclusive territory of the left in Italy. Giulio Tremonti, a former minister of the economy in Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government, has written a book called Fear and Hope (La Paura e la Speranza), largely arguing against free trade and the opening of international markets.

Tremonti blames the recent rise in the prices of consumer goods on globalization and says that this is only the beginning. The global financial crisis, environmental destruction, and geopolitical tensions in the struggle for natural resources are also fruits of globalization, according to Tremonti. He identifies the main problem as a lack of international governance of the process of globalization and calls for a new Bretton Woods-like system to confront the multiple crises caused by what he calls “marketism”.

The “dark side of globalization” can only be countered by a return to European values: tradition, the family, and the nation, adds Tremonti. Europe “needs a philosophy which makes politics and not economics the primary mover of globalization. This can only work if we go back to the roots of Europe, these are the roots of Judeo-Christianity”.

Ha ragione Tremonti o invece certi valori sono potenziati proprio dal mercato e dalla competizione internazionale? O forse sono semplicemente piani differenti, visto che l’esperienza empirica sembra dimostrare che più politica crea maggiori opportunità di rent seeking e di corruzione?