Back to Italy from his exile in Switzerland on 10th December 1944, on 2nd January 1945 Einaudi was appointed Governor of the Bank of Italy. From 17 January he begins to dictate his secretary a diary to «remember the things that are felt». Intended for personal use and not for publication, the diary, which has, at least for almost the entire 1945, daily cadence, constitutes a document of extraordinary interest both from an institutional point of view and from a cultural point of view. Einaudi records meetings and talks with the protagonists of the political and economic reconstruction of the Country. His impressions and judgments on politicians like Nitti, De Gasperi, Togliatti, Gronchi, Scoccimarro, Bonomi, Ruini, La Malfa, Parri, Umberto of Savoy, the confidences of bankers like Mattioli, and of entrepreneurs like Valletta, the problems connected with the various economic activities of the Country, the daily management of the Bank of Italy, meetings with collaborators such as Menichella, Steve, Rossi Doria, Carli, Baffi, relationships with intellectuals such as Croce, the primary interest in the reconstitution of a free press: everything is faithfully noted by Einaudi. He promptly recounts that intense phase of the life of the Country when after twenty years of dictatorship democracy begun - drawing attention on apparently marginal episodes that nonetheless shed light on the material wellbeing of Italian people.
Continued, although without regularity, in the year of the institutional referendum and of the election of the Constituent assembly, Einaudi's diary ended in March 1947, in the period immediately following De Gasperi's trip to the United States and the socialist split, at the eve of the marginalization of the left by the government, and the strengthening of the collaboration of Einaudi with De Gasperi, with his inclusion in the government.
