Why Dante put bankers in hell and James Joyce didn't

Robin Wigglesworth (0:02)

Hello, and welcome to a special bonus edition of The Story of Money, the FT's Financial History Show, with me, Robin Wigglesworth.

Gillian Tett (0:10)

And me, Gillian Tett. And today we've got a very special episode for you, which we recorded in front of a brilliant, very enthusiastic live audience at the FT Weekend Festival in London earlier this month.

Robin Wigglesworth (0:24)

We explored humanity's somewhat warped, hot-cold relationship with money. It's arguably our most seductive technology, because the value we ascribe to money is actually just a product of human imagination.

Gillian Tett (0:37)

And I should say also human trust, because money is something we collectively choose to believe in. It's not got any intrinsic value, but the value comes from the shared story that we tell ourselves and others.

And to understand how that shared story arises, it really helps to use not so much a financial lens but a literary lens.

Robin Wigglesworth (1:00)

Which is why we turn to two great writers who held up very, very different mirrors to money.

In one corner we have the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. He feared that this collective illusion would corrupt and damn us to the innermost circles of hell.

Gillian Tett (1:16)

But on the other hand, we have the Irish literary giant James Joyce. He thought money would actually liberate us and give us wings.

Robin Wigglesworth (1:24)

And to take us on this journey, we welcome David McWilliams, author of Money, A Story of Humanity to the stage. Welcome, David.

David McWilliams (1:41)

Thank you very much for having me.

Gillian Tett (1:42)

Well, it's great to have you. And actually, you're helping to solve my conscience by having here, David, because after we launched the Story of Money as a podcast, David sent me a rather rude text message with an emoji saying, what the F?

Because of course, his book is all about the story of money. So he kind of thought we'd stolen it from him. So to basically get him our way back, he's here today, and he can tell us all how he had the idea first. But as an economist, tell us, how on earth did you manage to get mixed up with Dante and Joyce? Because that's not the normal territory, is it?

David McWilliams (2:19)

No, it's not the normal territory, but the theme of this book that Gillian and Robin have stolen, every chapter, every thesis from-

I was thinking, yeah, that's true, actually. I was thinking, you know, the collective now, you know, it's sort of a shoal of fish, and it's a flock of birds. And what is it of economists, podcasters and writers?

Gillian Tett (2:44)

A gaggle.

David McWilliams (2:45)

A jealousy.

Gillian Tett (2:46)

Jealousy.

David McWilliams (2:48)

So the reason that Joyce and Dante appear in the book is because the main idea behind the book, so I'm a former central banker, a former investment banker. I've been a monetary economist for about 30 odd years. And Gillian, something struck me during COVID when I was writing the book that my tribe, economists, missed something big about money. We miss what money does to us. What has been the role of money in human progress? What is this thing that we called money? And I alighted on the idea that money, when you really think about it, is a technology.

And most of us think, economists, when we talk about technology, we talk about physical technologies like the wheel or the Internet or whatever, right? But there is this other branch of technology in economics called social technologies. And social technologies are technologies that allow us humans to collaborate, cooperate at scale, and ultimately to live together.

So once that idea began to germinate, then it struck me that if you look at the history of money, you see this coevolution of money and other things which we describe as elements of human civilisation, writing, numeracy, philosophy, political discourse, all that sort of thing. So it struck me that if you look at money as a coping mechanism that humans came up with when we migrated from being hunter-gatherers to domestics over thousands of years, coping mechanism in the sense that it allowed us a way of organising our society. Then what you see is that money is this sort of force in humanity, almost like a Promethean force.

Gillian Tett (4:49)

It was a bit like electricity helping societies and cultures to actually operate.

David McWilliams (4:53)

Exactly. I mean, the book was going to be called The Fifth Element, so we had the four elements.

Robin Wigglesworth (4:58)

Luke Christon got in touch and said you could do that.

David McWilliams (5:01)