Controlling the money supply proved far harder in practice than in theory (notably in Britain in the 1980s: Mr Friedman grumbled that the British authorities were going about it in the wrong way).
Italians must decide between "a European future, or an African one," a politician says, before exchanging looks with an assistant and asking for the remark to be struck from the record.
But several people seemed shaken by what they described as "the second tremor," when throngs of vandals looted stores and warehouses in the worst affected areas of the disaster zone.
Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world's population still suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans.