Finance is not the dark side of the force

Even in the face of far more recurrent, deeper and contagious episodes of financial instability, the mainstream view still suggests a macroeconomic framework where finance (not differently from money) has no role in affecting permanently the state of the economy, its perspectives of growth and prosperity: finance is at the best an opportunity (but no more than an useful mean), and at the worst it is the source of an inconvenient temporary disturbance. Contrasting this reductive conception of the financial side of the economy there exists a full body of literature which be-comes especially popular in times of crisis, but that can be rooted back to the very origins of Eco-nomics as a Science. After a brief empirical sketch of the impact of financial disturbances on macroeconomics, the paper focuses on theoretical aspects, in the attempt to highlight the com-mon basic cornerstones of a macroeconomic vision of critical finance, i.e. a vision where finance can be the endogenous driver of the complex dynamic pattern of the economy. The thesis sup-ported in the paper is that the theoretical framework behind Minsky’s Financial Instability Hy-pothesis is especially suitable in order to select such relevant foundations.