Thomas Hobbes, when enunciating, in Leviathan, that wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strenght of the Commonwealth, takes the term riches in two distinct senses: that of a collection of goods — a substantive sense — and that of power of obtaining future goods — a transitive sense. Although the latter, over the centuries since Hobbes, has been eclipsed by the former, the fundamental importance of the concept of credit in the dynamic of social exchanges points out that an analysis of riches that emphasizes their transitive character, its relation to the expectation of future time, is necessary in order to understand, in all its complexity, the attribution of value to the goods, as well as to realign the economic analysis to the purpose of the Policy. Riches, as signs of power expression, transform, thus, the understanding of the concept of poverty, which ceases to denote essentially a state of material scarcity, to be understood above all as a state of misery and servitude.