52	THE LITTLE OLD LADY IN NEW YORK

At a certain point, the industrialist Cesare Romiti was apparently looking for an “intellectual ally.” And he thought I was it.

It was the time of the Alliance for Turin.

One evening a woman who was a friend of mine gave a dinner for me, Romiti, and Marco Rivetti, the boss of Facis, one of the great enlightened industrialists of Turin: highly simpatico, an art connoisseur, very much villa-with-boys-in-Morocco and who knows where else in the world (but unlike other equally rich and famous men, he wasn’t married).

I said some things to Romiti that were a bit extravagant, extravagant to him anyway, a species of extreme Keynesianism. Hypothesis: if a little old lady in New York believes that the shares of General Motors are going to go up, she trades them actively, and if a lot of little old ladies do the same, the share price does go up, people have more money, they buy more cars, General Motors sells more, and everybody makes out.

Gianbattista Giuffrè was another example I put to him. Giuffrè had ruined a bunch of investors. Why did his system break down? Because at some point somebody insisted on seeing all the cards on the table. But everything would have been okay if they hadn’t.

I had this notion that the lightening of reality might also be realized through a sort of financialization of the economy, but that would bring money into the system. If I had more money I would buy two cars. I don’t think Keynes would ever have maintained this. But to hire someone to dig a hole and then fill it up so you can pay him a wage so he can buy things—it’s the same idea overall.

So I put these things to Romiti, and I could see he was a bit disappointed. He replied, “If I go to the United States and I have to change lire into dollars, what do I do?” I replied, “We should have a single currency worldwide, so everybody’s in the system.” I still don’t see what wrong with that idea.

With Romiti I remained friends, and we call each other “tu” when we meet. I find him an upstanding and simpatico right-wing gentleman. We call each other “tu,” but we have a reciprocal agreement to use the formal “lei” in public. Otherwise our friends—both his and mine—would pull our hair out.

Since I’m a parvenu, I always wait for him to speak first, you never know. If he calls me “tu,” fine. If not. . . .