Postcard from Wall Street (in Italian)

What is 2012 going to be like? This is the question we are all asking, especially those of us who invest in the financial markets. It is certainly not easy to come up with an answer. Francesco Guerrera, Money & Investing Editor at the Wall Street Journal, is among those who have tried to do so, reviewing the events of 2011.

His article is serious, but also very enjoyable, and sometimes his healthy air of detachment also manages to raise a smile or two. After all, 2011 is over now, isn’t it? In any case, the writer’s feeling (which I share) is that it will take a good while longer for the waters to calm.

We are going through a reaction phase in which governments and institutions are trying to find the answer to a very difficult problem: the solutions they come up with will not be (indeed, cannot be) painless. At the very least, there will be new regulations requiring new codes of conduct, and uncertainty will be a difficult factor to manage for all the players involved in the present economic juncture.

Footnote: the writer, Francesco Guerrera, is Italian, born and bred, and despite his youth already has considerable expertise. Before moving to the Wall Street Journal he worked for the Financial Times in London, Brussels and Hong Kong, and has received considerable recognition for his journalism. He is an example of just how talented some of our guys around the world can be. The fact that they leave Italy often depresses us, especially because they are not always adequately replaced. Nevertheless, this phenomenon should make us feel proud and hopeful, because it means that we are certainly not lacking in raw material. We just need to find a way to get these “Italian brains” that have gone abroad to come back home.