TEDxNewWallStreet - Jacob Soll - Bankers, Public Accounting, and the Invention of Transparency
Channel: TEDx Talks
Date: 2012-04-12

Speaker Bio:  
Dr. Jacob Soll is a historian whose research studies of early modern Europe are shedding new light on the origins of the modern state

Description of Talk:  
This talk explains the difficulties posed to accounting by politics at the earliest stages of capitalism.  Even the Medici family, masters of banking, ended up cooking their books and losing their bank.  In great part, this had to do with bad bookkeeping.  Many of the pitfalls and challenges faced by the Medici remain with us today.

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