Saturday, January 16, 2010

It's a good thing history never repeats itself:

“Decades of deficit financing had given rise to massive crown indebtedness, which diverted capital from economically productive investment, and generated a whole series of fiscal distortions that were progressively crippling Castile’s capacity for economic revival. In the cities and countryside of Castile, as in the royal administration, an oligarchy of interlocking families had accumulated a power and an influence that were eroding little by little the crown’s authority and limiting its room for maneuver as a potential force for change.” -- p. 677

Elliott, J.H. The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press 1986)