AFP , Wednesday 16 Nov 2011
A regular church-goer, he attended mass in the famous chapel of Rome's Sapienza University on Sunday before receiving the nomination to be Italy's future premier from President Giorgio Napolitano.
After receiving the nomination, he has immediately moved to launch wide-ranging talks with political parties, trade unions, big business, as well as women's and youth associations to build consensus for the challenges ahead.
Monti has spoken of the need for "social equity" and "economic, social and civil growth" — perhaps an olive branch to unions and an attempt to counter criticism of his role as advisor to Wall Street juggernaut Goldman Sachs.
On Monday he called for: "A project of recovery and hope not only for the economy but also for the fundamental values of a true civil society."
He has also spoken about the "historic challenge" of building cohesion between northern and southern Italy as a precondition for national growth.
While there is little doubt about his abilities as an economist (Monti is an alumnus and dean of a training ground for financial elites, Bocconi University in Milan), the concern is about how he will perform in practice.
Despite his 10-year stint in Brussels, the technocrat has never held political office in Italy and faces a hard time steering through a fractious political scene with sniping from ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's allies.
He has already shown mettle, however, by insisting that his government has to stay in power until 2013 — the scheduled date for the next general election — and calling for patience from financial markets while he puts his team together.
As European commissioner, Monti famously fined US technology giant Microsoft nearly 500 million Euros ($672 million at current exchange rates) and blocked a massive $42-billion merger between General Electric and Honeywell.
In one of his rare interviews, Monti said that former European Commission President Jacques Santer had described the economist as "unlike an Italian" in a phone call with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 1994.
He also said that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder once referred to his Jesuit schooling saying: "You studied with Jesuits? Yes? Ah, that's why you elaborate, elaborate, elaborate and never concede anything!"
Born on 19 March 1943 in Varese in northern Italy, Monti graduated in 1965 and went on to teach economics in Turin and Milan in the 1970s and 1980s — a time of major social upheaval and student political militancy in Italy.
It was a time when labour market reforms and free market economists like Monti were hounded and he confessed in one of his rare interviews in 2005 to his fear of being forced to undergo "political exams" by radicalised students.
As an economics researcher, he developed the Klein-Monti model which is aimed at describing the behaviour of banks operating under monopoly circumstances.
Monti went on to study at Yale under James Tobin, the Nobel prize-winning economist and famous advocate of the "Tobin Tax" — or "Robin Hood Tax" — on global financial transactions which is currently on the international agenda.
He was the first chairman of Bruegel, a European economic policy think tank, and is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, an influential association of international political and business leaders.
For all his sobriety and gravitas, Monti has confessed to one irrational superstition: he cannot walk on if he sees a black cat crossing his path out of fear of "bad luck". Perhaps a prudent concern in the tough times ahead.
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