Finance and the Good Society [Review of the Book Finance and the Good Society by Robert J. Shiller, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012]

The concept of common and greater good, with necessary distinction, is a powerfully and vehemently recurring issue in one of the New York Times' best-selling economists and Yale University Sterling Professor's latest book, Robert J. Shiller, entitled Finance and the Good Society. In his book Shiller defines finance as ‘the science of goal architecture’ , which is able to structure the economic arrangements needed to achieve a set of important goals for society; wielding the essential stewardship of the assets required for that achievement. The author reminds that the very meaning of the word finance derives from ‘finis’, the classical Latin term for ‘goal’. In this vision the goal matters, and for the author finance is exactly the means to achieve society's greater goals.