ASSIST FOR BIG BUSINESS IN ITALY
ROME == At its February 22 meeting, the Council of Ministers decided on several immediate measures to combat current economic difficulties, including inflation.
The price of gasoline was increased 15% and the registration fee ied new automobiles was boosted on a scale progressing from 7% to 15%,
New regulations were announced on installment buying (limitation to 12 installments, down payment of 30%, etc.) Provisions were made to lower the prices of meat, butter and other essential commodities (through imports and controlled sales),
By amending tax legislation, the registration of stockholders! shares was practically ended, thus legalizing tax evasion, The money thus freed will go into the financial structure of state industry and at the same time capital will be freed for private industry through eredit ohannels.
The center-left government is seeking by these means to (1) . Stabilize the stock market (abolition of registration), and (2) ease . credit for the big private monopolies already favored by the policies of the Bank of Italy.
Without doubt these measures, particularly the strictures on installment buying, will initiate a crisis among some sectors of small or medium industry (for example, household electric goods, television, etc.) already hard hit by the tightening of credit. Unemployment will increase as a result,
Thus conditions will be created for a policy of pressure against wages ("revenue policy"), something that is being demanded with in creasing insistence by the bourgeoisie and their economists,
The Communist party LCPI] has strongly protested these measures,
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yet remained content to renew its proposal for structural reforms, without posing imperatively the need to oust the government,
The Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity [PSIUP] has also come out against the measures, finding them to be fresh_justification for its split from Nenni's Italian Socialist party [PSI].
Even within the PSI, the government measures have been strongly criticized, It is no secret that the Socialist Minister of the Budget, A, Giolitti, is personally very doubtful about the efficacy of the measures, and the editor of Avanti, R. Lombardi, wrote that the compromise over the registration of stocks will prove to be not tho’ lest of its kind, One more like it and the Socialists will be forced to leave the government,
In fact Nenni and his party find themselves in an unfavorablo situation and it is now being said everywhere that it will not be long until a government of the right comes in with a policy of austere ity and a wage freeze,
At present any move in this direction would meet with a hostile reaction from the unions, above all the CGIL [General Confederation of Italian Labor, the main trade-union organization in Italy dominated by the PCI, PSI and PSIUP].
JOHNSON