Theory and Practice; and on Some Distortions Concerning the Equation of Exchange

1. The great acclaim Mario Mazzucchelli has achieved among Italian scholars addressing concrete economic problems — professional economists, bankers, industrialists, businessmen, and, I imagine, not a few leading figures from the world of finance and politics — is, I imagine, widely envied. I have heard him denied the virtues of a writer, because he makes use of outlandish words, the fruit of his own unconventional imagination: ‘neophyticians’, ‘theoreticians’ (instead of theorists), ‘faineantists’, ‘subitem’, ‘influentialling’, ‘alcoholization’,1 to quote from just the August issue, crowned by the inimitable ‘crisastic’ (It. crisastico), an adjective Mazzucchelli has almost succeeded in endowing with a birthright in the Italian language through his obstinate insistence on using it. The interminable rigmarole of honorifics strung together — H.E., K.C., Prof., Grand Off., Chev. of Great Cross, Doct., Att.,2 and so forth — that he pins on important personages he happens to cite3 inclines toward the comical. At times, his dithyrambic eulogies of printed reports dealing with everyday routine matters verge on the absurd. Yet despite this inexperience as a writer, Mazzucchelli has made a name for himself through the form and substance of his prose. His tense style, colourful and abounding in originality, his typically Ambrosian common sense, his strikingly germane and appropriate interpretations, his crafty ability to uncover among a maze of apparently innocuous sums some aspect that calls for clarification, his keen financial acumen, manifestly honed by prolonged contact with the world of banking, his sharp clinical eye as of one who is familiar with shopkeepers and peasants, financiers and housewives — all this has made ‘Considerazioni sul conto del tesoro, sul bilancio e sulla circolazione’ [‘Considerations on the Treasury Account, the Budget and Circulation’], published by Mazzucchelli every month in the Rivista bancaria [Journal of Banking] perhaps the most widely read economic commentary in Italy.