Skyward Cities

What Drives Their High Profits, How to Share Them with Savers, and What’s Driving the New Round of Banking M&A Bankers are among the most disliked – and envied – people in the world: they privatize profits and, in times of crisis, socialize losses. While bailouts can sometimes be unavoidable, they can be prevented with simple rules and strong, independent regulators. And profits, too, can be shared – not through one-off taxes, but by steadily lowering costs for customers and businesses. By contrast, heavy political involvement in banking M&A risks holding back the development of capital markets and reinforcing an economy still overly reliant on banks. Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we also revisit the country’s economy and the situation of refugees in Europe, caught between the desire to stay and the hope of returning home.

With soaring prices in major cities and no real housing policy, home has become the new symbol of inequality In Italy, having a home remains a universal aspiration, yet the state invests far too little to address the housing emergency. Fear of appearing to help immigrants or municipalities run by “opposing” political coalitions has stalled any meaningful action. The housing plan announced by Giorgia Meloni will only work if it truly delivers affordable student housing and public units—projects that have been stalled since the old Fanfani plan. Housing is fundamentally an issue of equality, mobility, and social cohesion. And it needs to be treated as such.