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Decodificare il presente, raccontare il futuro

THIRTEENTH FLOOR

A novel by Guido Maria Brera, The Devils conceives high finance as a device of political and social control. It does not recount the ambitious yuppies in Manhattan in the eighties, nor the exuberant and hyperbolic milieu depicted in The wolf of Wall Street. Rather, it paints a fresco of the global financial markets the day after the great subprime mortgage crisis, it sounds out the brutal attack at the sovereign debts of the marginal European states. The Devils brings to light the most profound contrraditcions of our society, revealing in advance the critical issues of the future. And now its narrative universe endures beyond the pages of the book, expanding in the web by means of The 13th Floor section in The Devils website. Here the story develops thanks to three main characters: Derek Morgan, the Stock Market general, driven by the angst of defending by any necessary means the status quo, he is the personfication of power; Bruno Liveraghi, the cynical rider leading one of the most important american hedge funds, the embodiment of gain; Philip Wade, the melancholy intellectual teaching contemporary history at the Birkbeck College of London, the portrayal of the middle class burdened by the great crisis and the financial tempest. Here they are in The 13th Floor, in the form of fictional short stories or imaginary interviews, carrying the passengers throughout the stormy oceans of the present times. Bon voyage!

THE LAST MAN AND THE DIGITAL ORDER

Phil observes the solitary silhouette on the pier, his tiny and motionless figure in front of the giant metal volumes all around, regulated by the new digital order. Francis Fukuyama said that history was over and that “the last man” would be the prototype of the liberal. He was wrong: we may not yet know the real “last man”, but we do know that Fukuyama’s one has failed.

DOMINIC MORGAN’S GREAT NIGHTMARE

The Reddit community’s assault on GameStop and other stocks has undermined the foundations of old finance and seems to be rewriting the rules of the game. Dominic Morgan, who has always slept soundly in the shadow of crises and general chaos, knowing how to turn them to his advantage, is now struggling to doze off. He cannot turn his thoughts away from a great nightmare.

MAKE AMERICA VIRGIN AGAIN

America will awaken indignant and virgin. The audience will be under the illusion that they are preparing to witness something new in front of a free stage. Dominic Morgan knows this, and he smiles knowing that everything will start all over again: one repeat after another, a continuous loop of renewal and restoration.

«DEBT, AN INSTRUMENT OF POWER». FROM PHILIP WADE’S DIARY

The right to bankruptcy no longer exists, because debt is the lintel of this system. And the “COVID finance” goes in the same direction: providing subsidies to keep the debt cycle going. In the meantime, equity is held by 1% of the population, while what needs to be paid off is well spread over the remaining 99%.

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS MASSIMO RUGGERO

I arrived in London in the early ‘90s. My hunger for life pulsated to the rhythm of the Victorian palaces of Kensington and Notting Hill, still full of squatters: it seemed impossible I could satiate myself. I left the eternal city behind me, with its enchanted atmosphere and the universities crossed by the utopias of the movement. I chose the blinking realism of the City, the unstoppable rise, th

From Philip Wade’s diary

The university was my privileged observatory on the great changes in society. Still, meanwhile, Wall Street dominated the scene outside. Financial bubbles filled the air like the bombs of the so-called “humanitarian wars”. With bitterness and disenchantment, I saw the roaring 1990s lay the foundations for a cluster of contradictions that would have exploded in the following decade.

BEING DOMINIC MORGAN

The ‘90s: fin de siècle, roaring and unrepeatable. Everything was changing, a real revolution was coming — a cultural, technological, economic one. Something was taking shape, and I could hardly recognize its precedents. I felt like I was at the center of the world, ready to engrave my name in the future. And I was right.

THEY THINK, THEREFORE THEY ARE: THE NEW LIFE OF CAPITAL FLOWS

Capital flows are invisible forces: they affect our lives and shape what we call reality

THE REASONS OF THE DEVILS

This is our new challenge for the months to come.

BIOFINANCE AGAINST RAGE AND DISSENT

The big game is almost over. Some tested mechanisms seem to be out of phase. Nowadays finance is a scapegoat. They think we are responsible for every disaster.

MACHINES AND FINANCE

As Slavoj Žižek wrote “We are the rebels and the war we fight is a warranty for everybody. Let’s make public use of reason”

LEAVE HAS WON: THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Brexit is not a big deal. In 12 months we will have a new President at the White House, a new tenant at the Élysée Palace and a new German government. Not to mention the Spanish Elections of the next Sunday and the possible upcoming events after the autumn

UK, THE BEGINNING OF THE END. UE, THE END OF AUSTERITY

I think that, in order to avoid this situation, the UK will try to act as a – or better, to certify his role of - global recycling market. It will try to do that on the margins of Europe, which makes everything even more complicated.

THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

A psycho-geographical dérive in Paris

LETTERA A LONDRA / DEAR BRITANNIA

WHEN “AARON SWARTZ” SHOOK UP THE WORLD

LOW COST

Can a t-shirt really satisfy a primary need through the transmission of an illusion of wealth?

ETHICS AND MONEY: THE BERLIN WAR

Interview with Lando Hoffman: "Germany will be left alone to deal with negative rates and deflation"

SEDUCED BY LIQUID MODERNITY

Infobesity, fast fashion, immigration and the unsustainability of the modern system according to the Polish sociologist.