This folder contains a selection of the papers discussed during the Round Table that took place on 14 October 2009 at the Milan State University, organized by the Costantino Bresciani Turroni Foundation. One of the most important activities of the Foundation is to organize, every year, a Round Table to discuss topical monetary and financial issues, also promoted by the crucial input provided to the economic analysis by Costantino Bresciani Turroni.

The turmoil that affected the German mark in the aftermath of the First World War can, obviously in a different historical context, provide a stimulus for the interpretation of the many troubles caused by the venturesome behaviour of certain financial and banking institutions. Equally important is the limited activity, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, of the institutional controllers that, once again, recognized only too late the abyss in which the financial system was falling, signs of which could already be perceived.

Out of the spontaneous course of events rather than of the farsightedness of the organizers, the Round Table took place at a time when the crisis was already showing its main micro- and macro-economic implications. It was thus able to focus on some of the main causes for the world financial turmoil, as well as to predict a few consequences. On the other hand, it is a responsibility of a research foundation, like the one dedicated to Costantino Bresciani Turroni, to go through the pleasant and somewhat unpleasant aspects of economic events according to different perspectives, and to suggest measures to solve them, obviously within the framework of the different skills that Bresciani Turroni, an economist, economic columnist, and man of finance and of State, was able to respect with rigour, but without dogmatic constraints.