mercoledì 11 maggio 2016

Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible by William N. Goetzmann

Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible by William N. Goetzmann
You have 144 highlighted passages
You have 117 notes
Last annotated on May 11, 2016
INTRODUCTIONRead more at location 133
Note: INTRO@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ NESSUNA CIVILTÀ SENZA UNA FINANZA SOFISTICATA...LA MACCHINA DEL TEMPO... MOBILITÀ SOCIALE... ASTRAZIONE E CONCRETEZZA... EMERGENZA... PIÙ RICCHEZZA PIÙ CONTRATI... FAMIGLIA E FINANZA...URBANIZZAZIONE E ANONIMATO... Edit
Finance is often regarded as an abstract, mathematical subject that occasionally calls attention to itself by dramatic crises or as a symbol of excess.Read more at location 134
Note: IL SIMBOLO DELL ECCESSO E DRLL ASTRATTO Edit
Finance played a key role in the development of the first cities, the emergence of classical empires, and the exploration of the world.Read more at location 135
Note: CITTÀ IMPERI ESPLORAZIONI... E FINANZA Edit
writing was invented in the ancient Near East specifically for recording financial contracts.Read more at location 137
Note: LE ORIGINI DELLA SCRITTURA Edit
Finance was integral to the first complex models of time and risk.Read more at location 138
Note: FINANZA E CALCOLO DEL RISCHIO Edit
The golden age of Athens owes as much to financial litigation as it does to Socrates.Read more at location 138
Note: ATENE E LA FINANZA Edit
Rome’s legendary wealth could not have sustained itself over the centuries without complex financial organization.Read more at location 139
Note: ROMA E LA FINANZA Edit
Chinese civilization developed its own financial tradition that enabled rulers to hold together a vast empire.Read more at location 140
Note: CINA E RUOLO COESIVO DELLA FINANZA Edit
In modern Europe, finance stimulatedRead more at location 141
Note: EUROPA E SCOPERTE Edit
an unprecedented era of exploration and discovery.Read more at location 142
Finance was an important co-factor in the Industrial Revolution.Read more at location 143
Note: RIVOLUZIONE INDUSTRIALE Edit
twentieth century, capital markets democratized investing and stimulated novel solutions to major social problems: social security, sovereign funds, and personal savings accountsRead more at location 143
Note: 20 SECOLO E PROBLEMI SOCIALI Edit
finance has also created problems: debt, market bubbles, devastating crises and crashes, exploitative corporations, imperialism, income inequality—to name only a few.Read more at location 146
Note: I PROBLEMI CON LA FINANZA Edit
Like other technologies, it developed through innovations that improved efficiency.Read more at location 148
Note: LA F: UMA TECNOLOGIA EFFICIENTE Edit
It is not intrinsically good or bad.Read more at location 148
TIME AND MONEYRead more at location 149
The power of finance to effect such important transitions in world history is that it moves economic value forward and backward through time.Read more at location 150
Note: MUOVERE LA RICCHEZZA NEL TEMPO Edit
A mortgage is so commonplace that it is hard to fully appreciate it. A homebuyer can suddenly conjure up a fortune he or she does not have.Read more at location 152
Note: IL MIRACOLO DEL MUTUO Edit
By the same token, a person worried about retirement can actually buy future living money today—usually at a significant discount.Read more at location 154
Note: PENSIONI E VECCHIAIA Edit
taking care of your futureRead more at location 156
technological structure that is able to express and enforce commitments that extend over decades and in some cases over centuries.Read more at location 156
Note: TECNOLOGIA DECENNALE Edit
In essence, financial technology is a time machine we have built ourselves.Read more at location 157
Note: LA MACCHINA DEL TEMPO. Edit
It also changes the way we think. Finance has stretched the ability of humans to imagine and calculate the future.Read more at location 159
Note: IL NS MODO DI PENSARE Edit
civilizations demand sophisticated tools for managing the economics of time and risk.Read more at location 163
Note: FINANZA E CIVILTÀ Edit
China is an important part of this book precisely because it faced civilization’s complex challenges of economic time and space in its own way.Read more at location 166
Note: IL CASO CINESE Edit
first paper securities—printed money that Marco Polo saw and used in China centuries before printing emerged in Europe.Read more at location 169
Note: LA PRIMA MONETA STAMPATA Edit
finance has vastly improved our species’ ability to reduce existential risks and to allocate resources through time to foster growth.Read more at location 174
Note: RIDUZIONE DEL RISCHIO Edit
The biggest of these is whether the intertemporal balance—the trade-off between current and future generations—can be preserved.Read more at location 176
Note: IL PROBLEMA INTERGENERAZIONALE Edit
Finance has four key elements: 1.  It reallocates economic value through time; 2.  It reallocates risk; 3.  It reallocates capital; and 4.  It expands the access to, and the complexity of, these reallocations.Read more at location 185
Note: I 4 ELEMENTI DELLA FINANZA Edit
The example of the mortgage above demonstrates the first key element: reallocation of economic value through time.Read more at location 190
Note: IL MUTUO SPIEGA IL TEMPO Edit
Second, finance reallocates risk. Reallocation through time means that financial contracts must cross the barrier of uncertainty that separates present and future.Read more at location 193
Note: TEMPO E INCERTEZZA Edit
For example, life insurance contracts can shift the risk of mortality from a single household to a large institution, which, in turn, can diversify by pooling it together with many other contracts.Read more at location 196
Note: POLIZZA SULLA VITA Edit
Third, finance reallocates capital. The stock market, for example, allows the flow of investment into productive enterprises.Read more at location 197
Note: LA BORSA FINANZIA CHI HA UN IDEA Edit
Fourth, finance expands the access to and complexity of these reallocations.Read more at location 200
Note: CONTRATTI SEMPRE PIÙ SOFISTICATI Edit
finance provided an increasingly richer set of intertemporal contracting possibilities.Read more at location 200
this complexity challenged the very boundaries of written language’s ability to specify them.Read more at location 202
Note: DESCRIZIONE DIFFICILE Edit
The virtue of such complexity is that it expands the contracting “space” between parties—that is, the number of dimensions along which they can negotiate.Read more at location 203
Note: SPAZIO CONTRATTUALE Edit
When you do this, you are able to arrive at agreements that simpler systems might not.Read more at location 204
Note: PIÙ CONTRATTI CHIUSI Edit
REALLOCATION THROUGH TIMERead more at location 207
There are two broad reasons for shifting money to the present: consumption and production.Read more at location 209
Note: CONSUMO E PRODUZIONE Edit
Consumption loans can be used to reduce risk. In an uncertain world, sudden expenses arise. Financial contracts allow you to borrow or pledge against the future to mitigate negative shocksRead more at location 211
Note: IL CONSUMATORE AVVEDUTO Edit
extreme circumstances, such as crop failure or a sudden illness, an emergency loan is a way to put food on the table and provide medicine to the sick—itRead more at location 212
Note: EMERGENZA! Edit
Productive loansRead more at location 216
They do not simply smooth economic shocks between the present and future; they make a different kind of future possible.Read more at location 217
Note: POTENZA DELL IDEA Edit
create an enterprise that will generate higher future value.Read more at location 218
By the same token, finance allows productive use of human ingenuity. Without finance, the only people who could start a business would be those who already had money to do so.Read more at location 221
In this sense, finance broadly disseminates the economic advantages of wealth—itRead more at location 223
Note: DISTRIBUIRE RICCHEZZA Edit
democratizes access to productive capital and removes the natural constraintsRead more at location 224
Note: DEMOCRATIZZA L ACCESSO AL CAPITALE Edit
The use of finance for consumption and production also has potential problems. Consumption loans have been criticized as promoting profligate behavior and exploiting desperate borrowers.Read more at location 225
Note: ACCSE AL CONSUMO: COMPORTAMENTI DISPERATI Edit
Productive loans can lead capital astray; easy money can fuel foolish projectsRead more at location 226
Note: SOLDI FACILI E BOLLE Edit
broader participation in productive enterprise.Read more at location 231
INVESTMENTRead more at location 232
Consumption and production use current capital; investment provides that capital. It is the basic technology for saving for the future. That is why pension funds hold stocks and bonds and other financial assets.Read more at location 233
Note: IL MECCANISMO Edit
delaying gratification.Read more at location 235
expectation of higher future consumption.Read more at location 236
The rate of return on the investment can be thought of as the price of time.Read more at location 239
Note: INTERESSE PREZZO DEL TEMPO Edit
For example, if the interest rate is too low, investors may prefer to spend their cash now rather than save it. If the interest rate is too high, producers may forgo projects, because their expected return on borrowed capital is insufficient to repay the loan.Read more at location 240
Investors are connected to today’s consumers and producers through financial institutions and markets.Read more at location 243
Note: BANCHE E BORSA Edit
When financial markets crash, investors can curtail the flow of capital to enterprise.Read more at location 244
Note: CRASH E PSICOLOGIA Edit
Demographics are fundamental to the equation. As the world’s life expectancy grows, the need to save grows as well.Read more at location 245
Note: DEMOGRAFIA E FINANZA Edit
Finance not only intermediates the present and the future, it also intermediates between the young and the old.Read more at location 246
Note: VECCHI E GIOVANI Edit
This is fine in a world of low-hanging entrepreneurial opportunities, but as the growth of emerging economies slows down to the pace of mature economies, the question of where future growth will come from looms large.Read more at location 248
Note: LO SPETTRO DELLA STAGNAZIONE Edit
CULTURE VERSUS FINANCERead more at location 251
It is easy to think about finance as an abstraction—after all, the notion of transcending time is fundamentally abstract.Read more at location 252
Note: TEMPO TRASCENDENZA E ASTRAZIONE Edit
Society has long struggled with placing finance in a moral and cultural context.Read more at location 253
Note: MORALITÀ DELLA FINANZA Edit
it creates the potential for social mobility and social disruption.Read more at location 255
Note: MOBILITÀ SOCIALE Edit
In some sense, the most basic intertemporal economic institution is the family.Read more at location 256
Note: FINANZA E FAMIGLIA Edit
Likewise, a reciprocal gifting commitment among family, friends, or members of a community fulfills the same function as a financial loan.Read more at location 257
Note: RELAZIONI SOCIALI E FINANZA. COMNCORRENZA? Edit
payments—tightening a social network rather than loosening it.Read more at location 258
In this sense, financial contracts were not entirely new. Rather they substituted for, and often improved upon, traditional intertemporal mechanisms.Read more at location 260
Note: SOSTITUZIONE Edit
At times, culture has lashed back at finance—particularly around financial crises.Read more at location 262
Note: XCHÈ LA CULTURA SE LA PRENDE CON LA FINANZA? Edit
For example, some of the earliest ad hominem attacks on financiers were by Babylonian political leaders consolidating authority.Read more at location 263
Note: BABILONESI CONTRO FINANZIERI Edit
The first stock market boom in eighteenth-century Britain was criticized in part because female investors were making money in a traditionally male-dominated realm.Read more at location 264
Note: BOLLA INGLESE DEL 700. LE DONNE FANNO SOLDI. CONDANNA Edit
Because finance is a potentially destabilizing force, society has often sought to place bounds on it.Read more at location 266
Note: FORZA DESTABILIZZANTE Edit
Usury lawsRead more at location 267
Note: MISURE PROTETTIVE Edit
Britain’s Bubble ActRead more at location 267
The Securities and Exchange CommissionRead more at location 268
restrictions on financial contracting is the implicit—and reasonable—supposition that rules are needed to prevent the financially adept from exploiting those less sophisticated—andRead more at location 269
finance reorganizes power.Read more at location 271
FINANCE AND CIVILIZATIONRead more at location 273
Note: FINANZA E CIVILTÀ Edit
It can focus economic power, shifting it quickly from place to place. It can be both a weapon of war and an instrument of peace.Read more at location 275
Note: RICCHI E POTENTI Edit
finance emerged in the first civilizations; reasons complex financial instruments are less frequently part of the toolkit of traditional cultures.Read more at location 277
Note: CIVILTÀ AVANZATE Edit
The hallmarks of civilization are urbanism; social specialization; sophisticated symbol systems; and complex, multidimensional interactions.Read more at location 278
Note: MARCHIO DELLA CIVILTÀ Edit
In a city you not only interact with family and long-term acquaintances. You also interact with people for whom traditional reciprocal relationships do not work.Read more at location 286
Note: CITTÀ E ANONIMATO Edit
Financial markets allow strangers to exchange value through time more efficiently than traditional reciprocity arrangements do. They do not require shared belief systems or cultural norms, simply a structure for documentation and enforcement.Read more at location 289
Note: FIONANZA: IL TRIONFO DELL ANONIMATO Edit
Civilization not only requires contracting among many different types of economic agents, but it also requires flexibility to respond to complex, multidimensional problems. Financial contracts allow an enormous variety of novel payoffsRead more at location 292
Note: FINANZA E FLESSIBILITÀ Edit
Complicated lives require interaction, planning, and commitment in many different dimensions over a variety of unknown future outcomes.Read more at location 298
Note: MULTIDIMENSIONALE Edit
FINANCE AND KNOWLEDGERead more at location 300
Note: FINANZA E CONOSCENZA Edit
One important way that humankind learned about the boundaries of the world was through merchant voyages requiring money and time—underwritten by investors hopeful of a future profit.Read more at location 301
Note: VIAGGI ED ESPLORAZIONI Edit
Trade routes linked societiesRead more at location 303
long-distance trade created long gaps of time:Read more at location 304
Columbus had to wait patiently for the funding of his first transatlantic voyage,Read more at location 305
Note: COLOMBO Edit
His contract with the Spanish crown was extraordinarily complex: he received not only political favors but also 10% of future revenues from transatlantic trade. He also negotiated an option to invest up to 1/8 share of any commercial enterprise organized to exploit his discoveries. Without this intertemporal contracting, he might never have set sail.Read more at location 306
Note: CONTRATTO DI COLOMBO Edit
Financial problems stimulated the development of writing, recording, calculation, and printing.Read more at location 309
Note: SCRITTURA CALCOLO STAMPA Edit
some of humanity’s most important mathematical innovations, including the discovery of logarithms, the mathematics of probability and uncertainty, and the ability of mathematics to express an infinitely long series and to divide time and the process of change into infinitesimally small intervals.Read more at location 310
Note: LOGARITMI PROBABILITÀ CALCOLO INFINITESIMALE Edit
quantitative models of the futureRead more at location 313
Markets taught people about such things as the limitations of the capacity for reason and the dangers of miscalculation.Read more at location 313
Note: LIMITI DELLA RAGIONE. CALCOLO DELL ERRORE Edit
Not only did financial architecture challenge traditional institutions, it also challenged traditional conceptual frameworks for dealing with the unknown.Read more at location 316
Note: FINANZA ED EPISTEMOLOGIA TRADIZIONALE Edit
Cultural notions of chance and fortune are embedded in a rich set of symbols, myths, and moral valences.Read more at location 317
Note: RISCHIO FORTUNA PROB. Edit
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARERead more at location 319
Note: TITOLO Edit
The hardware is constituted by such things as financial contracts, corporations, banks, markets, and monetary and legal systems.Read more at location 320
Note: HARDWARE Edit
On an even deeper level, finance is a system of thought; a means of framing and solving complex problems about money, time, and value. In essence, this is the softwareRead more at location 322
Note: SOFTWARE Edit
This book highlights historical episodes in the development of both financial hardware and software.Read more at location 324
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COINRead more at location 327
Note: TITOLO Edit
Financial solutions improved the capability of humankind to create cities, to explore new worlds, to expand and equalize economic opportunity, to control risk, and to provide for an uncertain future. But at times financial innovation has created serious disequilibria in and across societies;Read more at location 328
Note: PRO E CONTRO Edit
PERSPECTIVESRead more at location 332
Note: TITOLO Edit
inventors and users of financial tools. Sometimes we know these people, but often they are anonymous.Read more at location 333
Note: INVENZIONI. LA PROSPETTIVA DELL EROE Edit
techniques were invented to make money, not to make their inventors famous. In fact, usually when we know a lot about financial innovators, it is due to a disaster.Read more at location 335
Note: QUANDO UN INVENZIONE FUNZIONA NN NE SAI NULLA Edit
For example, the visionary banker John Law is still known for the collapse of his innovative Mississippi Company designed to rescue France from bankruptcy in the years leading up to the bubble of 1720.Read more at location 336
Note: ES JOHN LAW Edit
Ultimately, finance is personal and concrete, not abstract and theoretical.Read more at location 341
Note: CONCRETEZZA E ASTRAZIONE Edit
Much of this book unfolds from research by archaeologists, classicists, historians, economists, and mathematicians.Read more at location 343
Note: PROSPETTIVA INDAGATORIA Edit
For example, we would not understand the birth of finance in the ancient Near East without Professor Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas, who discovered the origins of cuneiform writing—along with the origins of financial contracts.Read more at location 346
Note: DOCUMENTI PREZIOSI Edit
We owe a lot to the Shanghai financier and monetary historian Peng Xinwei 彭信威, who devoted his life to Chinese financial history before disappearing in the Cultural Revolution.Read more at location 348
A third perspective is empirical: the world of things and places.Read more at location 351
Note: UNA PROSPSTTIVA EMPIRICA Edit
For finance, this means coins, documents, correspondence, and places where these things were made and exchanged.Read more at location 352
Note: STRUMENTAZIONE Edit
My personal view is that the trajectory of technological innovation has been mostly upward and will continue to be so. The financial solutions we have in the world today are generally life improving.Read more at location 365
Note: TESI: LA FINANZA CI HA FATTO BENE E CONTINUA A FARCI BENE. UN COMPARTO ANXORA INNOVATIVO Edit
The problems they created have been serious at times, but as a global society, we seem to make progress in dealing with them.Read more at location 367
Note: PROBLEMI Edit
Would the world have been a better place without the discovery of loans, banks, bonds, stocks, options, capital markets, insurance, and corporations? Perhaps, but I doubt it.Read more at location 367
Note: IL MONDO SENZA FINANZA Edit
The argument in this book is that financial technology allowed for more complex political institutions, enhanced social mobility, and greater economic growth—in short, all the major indicators of complex society we call civilization.Read more at location 369
Note: ANCORA LA TESI Edit
3 FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURERead more at location 816
Note: 3@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
27 THE NEW FINANCIAL WORLDRead more at location 7679
Note: 27@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
Skyscrapers in the 1920s were financed with new investment instruments,Read more at location 7682
Note: FINANZIAMENTO DEI GRATTACIELI Edit
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be; and this national weakness finds its nemesis in the stock market.Read more at location 7684
Note: UNA PASSIONE XICOLOSA: SAPERE COSA PENSANO GLI ALTRI Edit
American is attaching his hopes, not so much to its prospective yield, as to a favourable change in the conventional basis of valuation,Read more at location 7687
Note: PROPENSIONE ALLA SPECULAZIONE Edit
I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object.1Read more at location 7692
Note: LO SCOPO DI WAL STREET Edit
AMERICAN WAYRead more at location 7695
Note: TITOLO Edit
Her seminar that day at Harvard Business School was a lesson in how Americans adopted stock market investing. The hand grenade was from the First World War. It was a reminder that much of American attitudes toward investing emerged in the wake of the Great War.Read more at location 7701
Note: JULIA OTT Edit
As post-war Russia in the 1920s marched toward a Marxist state, Americans moved vigorously in the opposite direction with a distinctive American kind of idealism and fervor.Read more at location 7703
Note: REAZIONE ALLA RUSSIA Edit
investing by American households increased significantly only during the First World War. The US government issued savings bonds to finance the American war effort, and these were purchased, in part, as a matter of patriotic duty.Read more at location 7706
Note: FINANZIARE LE GUERRE Edit
While Russians were being trained in the 1920s to reject the bourgeois idea of money and savings, Americans were introduced to a sophisticated new world of capital markets by brokers and bankers who saw retail investing as a new profitable area of marketing.Read more at location 7711
Note: IMPARARE IL RISPARMIO Edit
Although the New York Stock Exchange has operated since 1792 and the nineteenth century is replete with colorful stories of Wall Street speculators and railroad magnates, the United States was a net importer of capital until the twentieth century.Read more at location 7713
Note: FINO AL 900 IMPORTATORI DI CAPITALI Edit
Americans were cognizant of how British capital markets underwrote British imperialism in the Victorian eraRead more at location 7716
Note: IMPERO VITTORIANO E FINANZA Edit
Julia Ott points out that investment in American companies in the 1920s became a means for self-improvement, self-reliance, and personal empowerment. For the price of a share, an investor became a voting partner in a giant companyRead more at location 7718
Note: AUTOSTIMA E PARTECIPAZIONE. POTERE ESPRESSIVO Edit
These themes did not emerge spontaneously in American society; rather, they were carefully nurtured by Wall Street—particularly through the promotional activities of the New York Stock Exchange.Read more at location 7720
Note: MARKETING CIVILE Edit
In contrast to the popular pre-war notion of a Wall Street dominated by insiders like Daniel Drew, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and J. P. Morgan, the New York Stock Exchange in the 1920s emphasized fairness.Read more at location 7724
Note: DEMOCRAZIA VS BARONI ANTE GUERRA Edit
manipulation by insiders—theRead more at location 7726
Note: INSIDERS Edit
investing suddenly became a national pastime.Read more at location 7729
Note: LO SPORT NAZIONALE Edit
STOCKS VERSUS BONDSRead more at location 7730
Note: TITOLO Edit
Most of Henry Lowenfeld’s studies of global diversification in London used bonds to illustrate a sound investment policy.Read more at location 7732
Note: GB VS USA... BOND VS STOCK Edit
The Foreign and Colonial Government Trust was fashioned to capture high average bond yields, not capital appreciation of shares.Read more at location 7733
Note: INTERESSE VS PLUSVALENZA Edit
One thing made bonds less safe in the modern era: they carried the risk of inflation.Read more at location 7735
Note: INFLAZIONE E BOND Edit
The hyperinflation in Germany after the First World War horrified the world.Read more at location 7736

Bombati & Felici

Da padre apprensivo preferirei che mio figlio assumesse steroidi anabolizzanti piuttosto che giocare a rugby. Si tratta di sostanze certamente più sicure del rugby. O almeno, non conosco alcun caso di quadriplegia causato dagli steroidi.
Julian Savulescu (professore di “Etica Pratica” a Oxford)
ciclism
Se il problema del doping sportivo riguardasse la lealtà tra competitori, basterebbe non proibirlo e rendere tutto trasparente.
Se il problema del doping sportivo riguardasse l’alterata spontaneità delle performance, bisognerebbe vietare anche le diete, le medicine e gli esercizi.
Se il problema del doping sportivo riguardasse la sua pericolosità, bisognerebbe vietare interi sport come la formula uno, il rally, eccetera.
Ma forse il problema del doping sportivo riguarda il fatto che noi fans siamo interessati solo alla PRESTAZIONE RELATIVA. Ci interessa che la Juve batta il Napoli e non come gioca la Juve.
Il doping tra carpentieri non è vietato perché lì la prestazione relativa non ci interessa come fine ultimo: prendiamo semplicemente atto che Gianni lavora più intensamente di Alfredo e scegliamo lui per i lavori di casa, sono quelli il fine ultimo. Tuttavia, se il doping sportivo fosse liberalizzato le gerarchie rimarrebbero immutate, per contro i danni alla salute e l’artificiosità rimarrebbero. In altri termini: avremmo solo il negativo senza il positivo. In questo caso è razionale proibire.
Ma se è così perché nessuno si interessa sul serio al campionato dei Pulcini o a quello Femminile (tranne qualche genitore rinco e qualche fidanzato disperato)? Forse perché noi siamo interessati anche alla PRESTAZIONE ASSOLUTA e non solo a quella relativa. In questo caso…
Conclusione: quanto più il tifo cieco prevale sulla sportività disinteressata, tanto più ha senso vietare il doping.
Lettura consigliataHuman Enhancement di Julian Savulescu e Nick Bost