«Creo que tenemos la peculiar idea de que nuestro gobierno es perfecto sin saber real y verdaderamente cómo funciona».72
«Consideramos evidentes estas verdades: que los hombres son creados iguales; que han sido dotados por el Creador de ciertos derechos inalienables; que estos derechos son la vida, la libertad y la búsq...
When set in its proper historical context, the present time appears less unnervingly unprecedented and more familiar.
Volte-face
There are now two kinds of people in the world: those who own and run the networks, and those who merely use them
The way the money was spent ensured that Spain’s newfound wealth provided the entire continent with a monetary stimulus.
The secret of our success as a species ‘resides . . . in the collective brains of our communities
The lights in financial markets were flashing green, not red, until the very eve of destruction.
The first symptoms of decline. The collapse of nations, he argued, was due to internal rigidity coupled with a decline in the ability, both moral and physical, to shape surrounding circumstances. . . ...
That investors should be able to take physical possession of the cotton which underpinned the bonds if the South failed to make its interest payments. Collateral is, after all, only good if a creditor...
Tenuously
Suppose they began to worry about the health of the Japanese currency, the yen, in which bonds are denominated and in which the interest is paid. In such circumstances, the price of the bond would dro...
Seigniorage
Rigid structures of a hierarchical order can disintegrate with astounding rapidity.
Relationships between debtors and creditors brokered or ‘intermediated’ by increasingly numerous institutions called banks. The core function of these institutions was now information gathering and ri...
Propinquity to power is perceived to matter, especially in a time of crisis.
Poverty is not the result of rapacious financiers exploiting the poor. It has much more to do with the lack of financial institutions, with the absence of banks, not their presence. Only when borrower...
Our species should really be known as Homo dictyous (‘network man’) because – to quote the sociologists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler – ‘our brains seem to have been built for social networks’.
Only when savers can put their money in reliable banks that it can be channelled from the idle to the industrious.
Meme