ABSTRACT
Money, as a vehicular means of payment, is injected and rejected, credited and debited, in every payment. Therefore, money can be conceived as a numerical flow, a tool to be used to credit and debit companies and individuals, by means of bookkeeping entries in banks’ books. The Classicals, from Adam Smith and James Steuart in Scotland, from Jean-Baptiste Say in France to David Ricardo in England, groped for a proper explanation of profit, conceived as the income of the capitalist class. The theory of profit was revived in the 1930s, when the contributions of Keynes came to the fore as an alternative to neoclassical economics. The analysis of macroeconomic profits shows that profits and investment are strictly related to each other. The most famous set of national financial laws is likely the Dodd-Frank Act, which entered into force in 2010 to rule the US financial system.
