Dealing with the financial crisis of the past months has been like playing a videogame, Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti said on Thursday.
''As soon as you slay one monster, and think you can catch your breath, another one pops up and challenges you. In this crisis I think I've battled at least seven monsters,'' the minister explained.
Tremonti made his remarks at a round-table discussion organised by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Nicolas Sarkozy dedicated to the topic ''New World, New Capitalism''.
Looking at the financial crisis which exploded in the latter half of 2008, Tremonti observed that this was the product of a ''debt society'' created over the past few years by an ''access to debt produced by a finance technology which has degenerated the structure of capitalism''.
Speaking on the need for the free market to be governed by effective rules, Tremonti made a reference to Adam Smith, considered the father of capitalism, and said ''the market's invisible hand over the past ten years has been a little too visible''.
The 'invisible hand' was the metaphor which Smith used to explain his theory that an individual pursuing his own self-interest will tend to promote the good of the community.
During the round-table discussion Tremonti suggested that along with Smith, students of economics should perhaps also read Goethe's Faust and remember that ''borrowing credit is much like making a pact with the devil''.
Returning to the metaphor of the invisible hand, Tremonti added his own take and concluded: ''God made us with two hands, so maybe we should use them both''.
