conversing about dante civic passion, public life, economic reasoning1 speech by luigi federico signorini senior deputy governor of the bank of italy bank of italy, florence branch 3 december 2021 dante and the economy for this speech, i intend to draw inspiration from several passages of the commedia2 to formulate some arguments as an economist, which i will use towards the end to make a couple of free observations about one of today ’ s great problems. i hope that you will forgive me my unavoidable incursions into a field that is not mine and i shall try not to go beyond the bounds of this task. i leave discourses on literature to others. at best, i can invoke my passion for the subject, certainly not my competence. it is clear that the science of economics in the modern sense did not exist in dante ’ s day, although of course the economy as a fact did exist. it was not that economic reasoning was entirely lacking, at least from aristotle onwards, rather that the analytical tools potentially available to observers at that time were very different from those of today. today, through the lens of a subject that came into being several centuries later, we see it in a different way. if we look through this lens, one fact stands out. dante seems not to have noticed the impressive acceleration that society was experiencing at that time. or better, to the extent that he did notice, he only saw the negative aspects. 3 “ la gente nova e i subiti guadagni ” i would like to thank alfredo gigliobianco for helping me to write this text, paolo angelini and ivan faiella for reading it and making suggestions, and ignazio visco for his many useful remarks. ignazio visco set out a broad overview of the transformations of the economy and of economic thinking in dante ’ s time in a recent speech ( ‘ notes on dante ’ s economy and events of our times ’, banca d ’ italia, 2021 ). i deal with a less ambitious topic here : the reading of some extracts chosen from the commedia, in the spirit of the title of this conversation ( “ ‘ / civic passion, public life, economic reasoning ” ), using some of the intellectual instruments available to economists seven hundred years on. in dante ’ s radical refusal of the mercantile society emerging at that time, m. romanelli ( l ’ economia di dante. mercato, profitto, dono

philipp hildebrand : financial stability summary of a speech by mr philipp hildebrand, vice - chairman of the governing board of the swiss national bank, at the institut des hautes etudes commerciales de lausanne, lausanne, 16 september 2008. the complete speech can be found in french on the swiss national bank ’ s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * during the period of financial market turbulence, central banks have gone far with their interventions to stabilize the financial system, taking into account the high costs that can be imposed by a banking crisis onto the real economy. central banks by themselves, however, cannot guarantee financial stability in the long term. in particular, we cannot exclude that their interventions create incentives for banks to be less cautious in the future. the first line of defence therefore consists of banks having sound risk management practices and holding appropriate levels of capital and liquidity. the financial stability forum has made a series of recommendations in this respect. given the size of the big swiss banks in relation to our national economy, we should be especially prudent. for this reason, the swiss national bank supports the project undertaken by the swiss federal banking commission ( sfbc ) to strengthen capital adequacy requirements and to revise the liquidity requirements for the big banks. as the sfbc has pointed out on several occasions, these measures have to be implemented gradually – to ensure that banks have sufficient time to adapt. these measures will contribute to the solidity and credibility of the swiss financial centre. this will strengthen its position as a global leader in wealth management.