Francesco Vella's book goes "beyond". Beyond the analysis of the biggest financial crisis of the turn of the century, beyond the list of countless errors and imbalances that led the world to collapse, beyond the presumption of identifying a single and definitive solution to the exit from the economic-financial impasse .
An accurate exploration that has the main objective of re-evaluating and redesigning the role of finance, at a time when its own demonization seems to have become the leitmotiv of many economists, as well as of almost all of world public opinion.
Vella wants to immediately lay the foundations for what the reader will have to face along the way, almost as if to comfort or dissuade him from the fact that more than an economic essay, he will present a real artisan product, whose raw materials are represented by real facts, seen from the point of view of the most diverse sources: reports, blogs, interviews, empirical analyzes and much more.
"Studies and surveys that demonstrate how world finance has contributed to economic development and raising living standards, increasing investment opportunities - not forgetting, however, that all this represents a - meager consolation for those who now have to tighten their belts and that they would like all bankers to be pilloried, not just the American ones”.
The author proposes two simple but valid arguments, which form the conceptual pivot of the entire work: trust and risk.
In the first, references to behavioral psychology and the economy intersect, understood as a set of exchanges based on reciprocal relationships. At the same time Vella who, it should not be forgotten, is an academic in the field of commercial law and financial market law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bologna, does not shy away from identifying and analyzing the links between legal science and delicate balances of trust: sometimes reinforcing, sometimes conflicting. The law undoubtedly has the arduous task of making institutions and markets reliable, above all where, as in the post-crisis period we are experiencing, trust itself is failing.
The second argument, risk, or rather "riskyness", is introduced with a metaphor that makes us perceive its significant relative weight: "Finance without risk is like a car without wheels. Only that the wheels have to be inflated every now and then and, when they wear out, changed, otherwise the risk of accidents is high”.
The complex system of rules acts as the background to the entire work, to which Vella keeps a constant eye, considering them more than just a frame within which to move. “The rules – states the author – are essential for raising the risk management standards of organizations, for building a system of incentives for prudence and for punishing those who do not respect it, and for preparing to suffer the blows of the unexpected, in the knowledge that in any case, the unexpected exists and you don't always have all the answers ready”.
The extreme simplicity with which the writer describes some of the most articulated economic and financial mechanisms is striking: from hedge funds to structured financial instruments, passing through the bank bailouts implemented by most of the western states.
To do this, frequent examples are used, exploiting refined metaphors and at times making the work an authentic well-told novel.
In the first pages of the book and in the last chapter, the author maintains a sort of dialogue with a five-year-old girl, Clotilde, who "fulfills" various functions: first of all, she allows us not to lose sight of the communicative purpose that one writing of the genre aims to achieve, thus not dwelling in abstruse propositions from the university textbook; moreover, it allows to represent a “relaxing and very amusing simplification of what the future should be like”, a sort of best possible world.
An overall "honest" work, which does not pose strong expectations from a high scientific profile, but which at the same time represents the reality we are experiencing from anomalous and rarely explored perspectives.
Title: Capitalism and finance
Author: Francesco Vella
Publisher: The Mill
Series: Essays
Release date: 05/05/2011
Pages: 144, paperback
Italian language
EAN: 9788815150509
Price list: €14,00
