The International Financial Crisis: an Excursus from Herodotus to Plutarch, with a stop at Goldfinger

Basevi Giorgio

Politica economica, 2010, issue 3, pages 325-338

Abstract: This article is not a traditional scientific work in economics. It was written following the oral discussion of a book - Dionigi I. (ed.), "Il dio denaro", BUR Rizzoli 2010 - that the author made on the occasion of its publication. The author suggests adding a couple of classical writings taken from Herodotus and from Plutarch, to the collection of classical pieces that are discussed in the book by various experts on the classics. The first quotation that the author presents is taken from "The Histories" of Herodotus, and seems particularly interesting for the regulation of financial markets, and the role that its insufficiency played in building up the international financial crisis of 2007-2010. The second quotation is taken from "The Life of Lycurgus", by Plutarch, and is particularly illuminating for another aspect of the current crisis, i.e. the fear that exit from it may need to bring about inflation in order to reduce the burden of recently accumulated stocks of public debt. As for the reference to Goldfinger, the author hopes that it will make the potential reader curious enough to become an actual reader of his paper.

Keywords: international financial crisis; silent trade; seignorage; Herodotus; Plutarch; Goldfinger (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1429/33585 (application/pdf)
http://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1429/33585 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mul:je8794:doi:10.1429/33585:y:2010:i:3:p:325-338

Access Statistics for this article

Politica economica is edited by Paolo Bosi

More articles in Politica economica from Società editrice il Mulino
Series data maintained by ().