In 1863 the crisis of the world money market created panic and the rush to the counters to collect the metallic currency in exchange for the banknotes.

In 1914 the Bank of Italy assisted the Banco di Roma, which had to devalue its capital due to losses reported in the activities in the eastern Mediterranean.

In this way, fascism, which equally aimed at the political control of monetary issuance, intended to strike one of the electoral strengths and of the business system that orbited around the industrial policy of the Catholic world, supported by credit institutions.

The savings from agriculture flowed into the rural coffers, the popular banks and the cooperative credit which financed the life of the provincial crafts, small businesses and construction.

After the "defenestration" of Bonaldo Stringher, Alberto Beneduce took over and was forced to retire in 1936 after a "heart attack" during a meeting at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel.

They conceived the duty of the banks towards the public interest of the country, as the subject who had to collect savings to lend them to entrepreneurs, as a tool for development and growth.

[13] The Central Bank supported the fascist monetary policy of defending the stability of the Italian lira (known as the "Quota 90"), through the reduction of discounts and advances, and financing the enormous expenses of wars in the 1930s and 1940s through the unlimited issuing of money (and the "inflation tax", not progressive with income), as Hjalmar Schacht did in Germany under Hitler.

The printing of tickets and the scarcity of consumer goods created an overabundance of money that poured into bank deposits, allowing a new expansion of credit, which was directed in favour of the economic sectors themselves.

The absorption of savings into investments in fixed capital had already taken place in the First World War and industries were working with existing production capacities.

The war could start with a modest tax levy and inflation within the normal limits in the first months, before the black market and ration cards.

The banks renounced exercising an option by "converting" the debts into shares (or a law in this regard), preferring not to enter directly into the ownership of the industrial groups.

The groups transferred the bank debts to IRI, which became the new owner in exchange for shares (at the book value, not always the same as the market value), until they held control of the property and therefore of management.

The change of constitutional order and currency (exchange rate for conversion), and inflation meant that IRI (and industries) paid the Bank of Italy less than a third of the sum.

In March 1979 the governor of the Bank of Italy, Paolo Baffi, and the deputy director in charge of supervision, Mario Sarcinelli, were accused by the Rome public prosecutor of private interest in official acts and personal aiding and abetting.

Subsequently, the suspicion will emerge that the indictment was wanted by P2 to prevent the Bank of Italy from supervising Roberto Cavali Banco Ambrosiano.

[17][18] The post-war inflation, also due to the Am-lire, was fought with the credit crunch desired by the governor Luigi Einaudi, which was obtained through the compulsory reserve on deposits.

[19] The universal banks were the ones that had gained the most from war and inflation (under the Authorization Regime of the Interministerial Credit Committee), with the greatest growth in deposits.

The squeeze on lending, the liquidity crisis and the Eenaudian deflation pushed operators to finance themselves by placing stocks on the market and returning capital, thus blocking the rise in prices; and by resorting to self-financing (even without distributing profits), aided by the fact that inflation had made it possible to quickly amortize fixed assets whose book value was now nominal.

[21] During the years of the Reconstruction, governor Donato Menichella governed the issue in a gradual and balanced way: he did not implement expansionary manoeuvres to encourage growth but was careful to avoid the creation of credit crunches.

A part of the available bank savings was channelled annually to the Treasury to cover the budget deficit (in the current year), while during his tenure the public debt of the state never rose above 1% of GDP, until 1964.

The divorce between the Ministry of the Treasury and the Bank of Italy is still considered by economic doctrine as a factor of great stabilization of inflation (which went from over 20% in 1980 to less than 5% in the following years) and a central prerequisite for guarantee the full independence of the technical monetary policy body (central bank) from the choices related to fiscal policy (under the responsibility of the government), but also a factor of considerable incidence of growth of the Italian public debt.

[24][25][26][27][28] The law of 7 February 1992 n. 82, proposed by the then Minister of the Treasury Guido Carli, clarifies that the decision on the discount rate is the exclusive competence of the governor and must no longer be agreed in concert with the Minister of the Treasury (the previous decree of the President of the Republic is modified in relation to the new law with the Presidential Decree of 18 July).

On January 4, 2004, the weekly "Famiglia Cristiana" reports, for the first time in history, the list of participants in the capital of the Bank of Italy with the relative shares.

The source is a Mediobanca Research & Studies dossier, directed by the researcher Fulvio Coltorti, who, by investigating backwards on the balance sheets of banks, insurance companies and institutions, and gradually noting the shares that indicated a shareholding in the capital of the Bank of Italia managed to reconstruct a large part of the list of participants of the highest Italian financial institution.

On December 19, 2005, after intense press campaigns and criticism of his actions in the context of the Bancopoli scandal, Governor Antonio Fazio resigned.

The law of 28 December 2005, n. 262, as part of various measures to protect savings, introduces for the first time a term to the mandate of the governor and the members of the directorate.

The delegation made by law 262/2005, therefore, expired without the regulation being issued, but the right to ownership of the shares of the current participants is in any case safeguarded by a provision of the Bank's Statute.

The objective is to ensure the stability and efficiency of the system and compliance with rules and regulations; the bank pursues it through secondary legislation, controls and cooperation with governmental authorities.

Following a reform in 2005, the governor lost exclusive responsibility regarding decisions of external relevance (i.e. banking and financial supervision), which has been transferred to the directorate (by majority vote).

Since Italy has been for centuries divided into many historic states, they all had different coinage systems, but when the country became unified in 1861, the Italian lira came into place, and was used until 2002.