Medici Money

Описание: The Renaissance is known as a foundation stone of the modern world through both its art and ideas. But lesser known is that it was also a time when the modern banking system was created.

The Medici Bank was the most influential. Yet the trouble it attracted with the church and the state over using usury as a business model is a problem that our societies still face today.

Host, Ross Ashcroft, met up with Author of Medici Money, Tim Parks, to discuss the Medici banking dynasty and its legacy.

Broadcast 31 May 2021 -

7 key points

1. Ever since money was created as a universal means of exchange, all goods and services have had a monetary price attached to them. While it is perhaps tempting to lay the blame for this solely on neoliberalism and financialization, it is arguably the case that the source of this societal malaise nevertheless rests with the Medici Banks (1398 -1497) during the Renaissance period.

2. Around this time, paper money began to supplant gold money because the former was seen to be more mobile, less visible and less likely to be traced than the latter. In being more nebulous than gold, paper money was able to spread widely throughout society.

3. In a context where people become rich as a result of paper money investments, the whole of society becomes much more fluid and correspondingly, more unstable. It is through this money-making pyramid concept during the Renaissance-era of banking that we are able to make sense of synthetic credit and derivative swaps today.

4. More than any other group, the Medici intuitively began to look at how money could be made respectable. Their objective was to help cleanse the consciousness of the rich by attempting to pass off their actions as virtuous in the eyes of God. We see a similar process play out today in terms of the way banks invest in sports and cultural programmes.

5. The reaction to Renaissance-period morality and its relevance today is underlined in The Prince. a political-philosophical treatise by Medici-contemporary, Niccolo Machiavelli. It's easy to see how Machiavelli, who favoured stability, would have been a controversial figure during the Medici-era in the context where usury and paper money were seen as its antithesis.

6. The similarities between the Medici's and the modern banking system - usury, lending money, credit notes, double entry bookkeeping - are striking. It's all there today, and has been throughout history. But so has our really difficult relationship between money, government, God, morality and each other.

7. The tensions between those things that were present during the Medici-era also continue to resonate today. This can be seen, for example, in the way that some people destroy their lives chasing fiat currency. The solution to the malaise is to find some sort of equilibrium between being obsessed by money and dropping out of society completely.

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