Gianluca Garbi, managing director of Banca Sistema, signs the introduction to "Monte dei Pegni, an advance from the future”, latest novel by Elena Loewenthal. The book, available in bookstores and online stores from 9 December, contains 15 stories of ordinary people who, through pawn credit, have managed to change their lives in different ways depending on the story.
The center of the book is precisely these stories that tell simplicity and humanity that can be seen every day at the Monte dei Pegni. The meeting point of all these stories lies in leaving one's own important and valuable object as a pledge, with the hope of redeeming it in the future. In this way the Monte dei Pegni simultaneously tells us personal stories, those of the society in which they occur and those that have been written through the objects left as a pledge.
In the introduction, Garbi illustrates the history of the pawnshops up to the present day, recalling the topicality of this financial medium which is still used today in the same way as in the past: to obtain liquids immediately, it is necessary to commit assets of high economic value but of low usage value.
“It was an honor for me to write the introduction to volume by Elena Loewenthal which accompanies the preface by Professor Luca Ricolfi. The Monti di Pietà are not mere legacies of the past, but they can represent an important part of the world of credit in the future. Pawn credit is a tool that captures the needs of modern society to use something in disuse to obtain money, thus transforming the wealth accumulated by families into current financial flow. It is therefore one instrument of the modern shared economy, where it is no longer necessary to own but to share” commented Garbi.
