When historians will deal with the crisis of 2007-2008 and its consequences will be surprised by the ineptitude with which it has been addressed by the Western and, particularly by European governments. At least initially, it seemed that everyone could learn up from the Crash of 1929, the Depression and the Roosevelt New Deal. But today we are faced with a second Depression and no lessons learned.

The first setback was the victory of the Republicans in the midterm elections in the United States. Barack Obama initially was slow in dealing with the crisis. But he has taken some clear initiatives in the direction of recovery including eight hundred billion earmarked for it and, if drawing back from public ownership and management of them,  intervening with one hundred billion to save General Motors and Chrysler.

Keynesian economists as well the liberal wing of the Democratic Party criticized the president for the inadequacy of measures to combat the crisis. But this was a different approach from less state, balanced budgets and the market self-regulation in dealing with the crisis. Since then Obama’s scope for manouvre changed when the Republicans, driven by the agenda of the reactionary "Tea Party”, won the midterm elections

In Europe, it is quite different. If you read the letter*, no longer confidential, sent by the ECB to the Berlusconi government
 (Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi on Italian Sovereign Debt), you will find all the elements that in the United States are considered a foolish or reactionary program, or both. The difference is that in the US the reactionaries are in the opposition party, while in the eurozone they are in government.

The letter, signed by Jean-Claude Trichet and,  Mario Draghi, respectively the current and the new appointed President of the European Central Bank, disclosed by “Corriere della Sera”  spells a detailed economic program inspired to the fundamental tenets of neo-liberal theology, based on "less government and more market". You can find out a new retrenchment of the public pensions system; privatization of public services; reduction of public employees’ salaries, along with general cuts in public spending.

However, the most distinctive and intriguing issue is once again the reform of the labor market. Here, the requirements seem to be written not by central bankers but by consulting firms of employers' associations: that is, the reduction of wages through the abandonment of the national collective bargaining with the shift of the bargaining focus at the firm level where workers can hardly resist to the enterprises’ claims of worse working conditions and wage reduction; and also the liberalization of layoffs.

To wonder what all this has to do with fiscal consolidation would be a naïve question. According to the eurozone authorities, the future of the euro countries is entrusted to "structural reforms", a very misleading formula to indicate the reverse of the social rights in a framework of impoverished and powerless working class. Or, as in other occasions, I have written, a reversed New Deal, if we keep the comparison with the crisis of the Thirties.

Writing from Italy we can’t forget that the Berlusconi government is the worst and most unreliable right-wing government among many ruling European countries. However, its responsibilities can’t be used to disguise the meaningless way the European authorities are managing the crisis. On this point the Italian left has been voiceless or reluctant to clearly express its criticism for fear of providing an alibi to the ineptitude of the government. This is a mistake.

The fate of Italy is strictly tied to the European framework, but the contrary is also true. Italy is not Greece. The eurozone could hardly survive without Italy. Current European policies are aiming vainly to fix the crisis by backward social change. Paradoxally,  European technocracy treats a founding Member State as a "limited sovereignty" State, like in the Eastern Europe under Soviet hegemony.

In the next 18 months political elections will be held in France, Germany and Italy, the three countries upon whom are based the ultimate choices in order to transform the current crisis and its potential fallout into a recovery of the commitment o the 1986 Single European Act – the first revision of the Rome Treaty – to economic and social cohesion as its twin pillar. The parties of the Left should mobilize around this to avoid the European dream of the postwar founding fathers becoming a European nightmare.