Carlo Cottarelli, economist and director of  Italian Observatory of Public Counts at Catholic University of Milan, also known as the man of the Spending Review, was a very welcome guest of the Rotary International Net. In front of a large and attentive public, he made a rapid excursus into the history of our public debt, which has been growing ever since the seventies, when successive governments began to use public spending as a social shock absorber, thus increasing healthcare spending and pensions. . To reduce the debt today - the rapporteur said - the GDP should grow. But to get the economy going again, real reforms and massive bureaucratic simplification are needed, not public money donations that only increase the deficit. And which have no lasting impact on medium to long-term economic growth.