Pubblichiamo l’intervento di Stefano Vernole alla 34th International Islamic Unity Conference di Teheran Worse than in 2008 … More devastating than 1929 … Not even during the Great Depression of the 19th century.” In recent weeks, wasted efforts in the definitions on the economic catastrophe that is about to hit the planet after the forced closure of production activities due to the epidemiological emergency Covid-19. The European Union immediately spoke of the need for a new “Marshall Plan” similar to after 1945; this time no longer financed by the United States of America. But what is hidden behind this password, if not the evident unwillingness of the Old Continent to assume its responsibilities and the clear intention to keep the transatlantic ties intact? In the history, the “Marshall Plan” served to integrate the European economy into the United States, allowing a revival of German industry and giving shape to a continental block firmly controlled by North Americans. Aid was neither free nor disinterested, nor were the subsequent instruments of European integration: all the documents declassified in recent years show how both the birth of the European Economic Community and that of the European Union were favored by the CIA, an operation in anti-Russian function. One cannot help but notice how after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, contradicting all George Bush’s promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, the enlargement of the European Union to the east was preceded by the accession to NATO of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. American Aid served both to revive the US economy and soft power around the world, and to Washington’s need to keep the European unification process under control. The Marshall Plan guaranteed the domination of the dollar as an indispensable reference currency for international trade and for the purchase of raw materials such as oil on the market. Yet the greatest damage inflicted on Europe concerned the Americanization of customs: the end of the mainstay represented by the traditional family, the myth of individual success at all costs, the gradual transition from productive and protected capitalism of the post-war period to a globalized financial economy that unties profit from the ethics of hard work (and therefore from the empowerment of social behaviour). A sad reality that is reflected in the current crisis following the outbreak of the Coronavirus; it is so severe that it can be overcome only through a gigantic issue and transfer of non-repayable resources from the European Central Bank to the States and therefore to companies that risk default. However, despite the unanimity of judgment on the gravity of the situation, the recent European summits have totally excluded this possibility, preferring to leave the structural conditionality mechanisms represented by instruments such as the MES (European Stability Mechanism) are intact and allowing the possibility of future Recovery Funds to be ventilated, i.e. loans at market rates that would probably only start on January 1, 2021. The first objective of Anglo-American finance following the epidemiological emergency will be...