Agenda for a New Economy

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Agenda for a New Economy Page 29

by David C Korten


  rights, 107, 155, 180, 192–193, 213, 224–225, 250–254

  American colonial, 105

  Bill of, 178, 180

  corporate, 48, 85, 157–158, 183–184, 260–261

  intellectual property, 29, 183, 227, 279

  property, 237

  women’s, 105, 233–235

  See also social movements

  Roman Empire, 81

  Rome, 103

  Roosevelt, Franklin D., 67. See also New Deal

  Rothschild, Nathan Mayer, vii

  Rubin, Robert, 70–71, 234—235

  rules, 1, 52–54, 62, 72, 155, 165, 178–181, 206–207, 220, 260–261

  global, 157–158, 167, 169, 183–184

  See also markets, real; markets, unregulated

  Russell, Bertrand, 80

  Sachs, Jeffrey, 55–60, 63

  Sarkozy, Nicolas, 88

  Securities: The New Wealth Machine (Edmunds), 29. See also Edmunds fallacy

  Shadow Elite (Wedel), 2

  shared prosperity, 154, 163, 169, 174–176, 257

  Shuman, Michael, 11

  Silent Spring (Carson), 255

  sins, seven deadly, 119–120, 266

  slavery, 41, 82, 104, 107, 191–194

  The Small-Mart Revolution (Shuman), 11

  Smith, Adam, vii, 14, 48, 49, 50, 53, 125, 138

  social capital, 156

  social learning, 252, 259–260, 264

  social movements, 1, 6, 62–63, 101, 105, 107, 205, 220–232, 251–255, 262, 270

  Social Security, 77, 198, 201–203. See also investing; retirement

  Soros, George, 34

  Spain, 82–84

  speculation, 44, 54, 64, 173, 189

  climate change and, 122

  debt and trading schemes, 21, 74–76

  derivatives. Seederivatives

  free market and, 41, 47, 277

  hedge funds. Seehedge funds

  regulation of, 47, 53, 173–174, 190–191, 214, 239

  securitization, 29–30, 32, 70

  subprime mortgages, 73

  See also banks; confidence games; fraud

  Speth, James Gustave, 11, 55–64

  Stamp, Josiah, 67

  Stanford Business School, 8

  Star Trek, 140

  Stiglitz, Joseph, 115

  stock market, 31, 86, 89, 187, 190–191, 203–205, 217, 242

  stories, 164

  as a change strategy, 245–257, 259–252, 269

  as theory 23,

  institutions and, 262–269

  structural adjustment, 78

  Suess, Eduard, 139

  Summers, Larry, 70, 234

  systems

  criteria of healthy, 23–24

  design principles, enterprise, 177, 179

  design principles, living, 10, 146–150

  design principles, market, 49–50

  failure of, 17

  feedback, 153

  institutions of healthy, 152–164

  intervention points, 167–185, 261

  self-organization, 7–10, 49, 51–52, 54, 105, 125, 140, 145, 147–150, 152–153, 155, 163, 165, 183, 231, 256, 259, 262

  See also biosphere

  taxation

  charted corporations and, 85, 226–227

  class war and, 76–78

  climate change and, 122

  for education, 264

  Federal Reserve and, 116, 217, 239

  money supply and, 282

  New Deal, 68

  progressive, 175, 192–193, 212, 247, 281

  regulating corporations, 172–173, 180

  on speculation, 190–191, 214

  Tea Party, 241–242

  Thatcher, Margaret, 127

  The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 50

  theory

  importance of, 21–23

  of the market economy, 48–52

  Thompson, Nainoa, 135–136

  TINA, 127

  trade agreements, 78, 107, 119, 183–184, 211, 233, 235

  movements against, 223, 225, 246

  Travelers, 71

  The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (Morris), 2

  The Trouble with Markets (Bottle), 2

  U.S. Agency for International Development, 9

  U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission, 70

  U.S. Congress, 91–92, 173, 217–218

  U.S. Constitution, 107, 179

  U.S. Department of the Treasury

  bank bailouts and, 75, 91–92, 116

  federal debt and, 217

  phantom wealth and, 31

  regulation, 73, 173

  U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 92

  U.S. Federal Housing Administration, 92

  U.S. National Economic Council, 71

  U.S. Supreme Court, 241

  unions, 178

  United Nations, 110

  United Nations Development Programme, 60

  United Nations University, 78

  United Steelworkers, 177–178

  University of Chicago, 237

  University of Illinois, 98

  Vision of Humanity, 134

  Voluntary Simplicity (Elgin), 255

  Wachovia, 115

  wages, 195–196

  Wall Street, 1–8, 30, 32–42, 45–48, 140, 208, 216

  case for replacing, 65–79, 81, 86–93, 112

  con games, 186–191, 200–203, 205

  counterfeiting, 14, 54, 188

  criminal syndicate, 7, 54,

  globalization and, 142–145

  independence from, 207, 220, 222, 226–229,

  moral perversion, 119–121, 127–128, 136

  Ponzi scheme, 53, 75, 97, 118, 188, 201

  securities fraud, 188

  versus Main Street, 43–46, 48–54, 165, 170–174, 214, 226–228

  Washington political axis, 2, 72, 119, 122–123, 178–181, 233–236, 241–244

  welfare queens, 114–117

  window of opportunity, 18, 24, 43, 110–111, 117–119, 123, 244, 283

  Wall Street Trinity Church, xii, 5

  Wallis, Jim, 113, 274

  wealth

  as capital, 41

  Forbes list of richest people, 26, 66, 78, 99

  inequality. Seeinequality

  living, 19, 165–174, 181–183

  phantom, 21, 27–31, 187–190, 272–273

  real, 14, 18, 28–30, 32, 38, 40, 42, 53, 133, 172, 226–227, 276, 281

  real versus phantom, 13–14, 19, 65, 88–100 passim, 125, 140, 187–189, 208, 238

  See also banks; equitable distribution; money; shared prosperity

  Wedel, Janine R., 2

  Weiss, Gary, 2

  Wells Fargo, 114–115

  Wheatley, Margaret J., 258

  When Corporations Rule the World (Korten), 9, 46, 132, 223

  Wilkins, Roger, 230

  Wilkinson, Richard, 174

  Williams, Dee, 100

  Williams, John, 94

  women’s rights movement, 101, 108, 225, 253–255

  worker ownership. Seeemployee stock ownership plan; enterprises

  World Bank, 77

  World Resources Institute, 60

  World Trade Organization, 223, 225. See also trade agreements

  WorldCom, 31

  Yale University School of Forestry, 60

  YES! Magazine, xi–xiii, 10–11, 100–101, 183, 263, 268, 271

  Zinn, Howard, 222

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dr. David C. Korten worked for more than thirty-five years in preeminent business, academic, and international development institutions before he turned away from the establishment to work exclusively with public interest citizen-action groups. He is the cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine,the founder and president of The People-Centered Development Forum, a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, an associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a member of the Club of Rome and the Social Ventures Network. He is co-chair of
the New Economy Working Group formed in 2008 to formulate and advance a new economy agenda.

  Korten earned his MBA and PhD degrees at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Trained in organization theory, business strategy, and economics, he devoted his early career to setting up business schools in low-income countries — starting with Ethiopia — in the hope that creating a new class of professional business entrepreneurs would be the key to ending global poverty. He completed his military service during the Vietnam War as a captain in the U.S. Air Force, with duty at the Special Air Warfare School, Air Force headquarters command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

  Korten then served for five and a half years as a faculty member of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, where he taught in Harvard’s middle management, MBA, and doctoral programs and served as Harvard’s adviser to the Central American Management Institute in Nicaragua. He subsequently joined the staff of the Harvard Institute for International Development, where he headed a Ford Foundation– funded project to strengthen the organization and management of national family planning programs.

  In the late 1970s, Korten left U.S. academia and moved to Southeast Asia, where he lived for nearly fifteen years, serving first as a Ford Foundation project specialist and later as Asia regional adviser on development management to the U.S. Agency for International Development. His work there won him international recognition for his contributions to the development of strategies for transforming public bureaucracies into responsive support systems dedicated to strengthening the community control and management of land, water, and forestry resources.

  Increasingly concerned that the economic models embraced by official aid agencies were increasing poverty and environmental destruction and that these agencies were impervious to change from within, Korten broke with the official aid system. His last five years in Asia were devoted to working with leaders of Asian nongovernmental organizations on identifying the root causes of development failure in the region and building the capacity of civil society organizations to function as strategic catalysts of positive national- and global-level change.

  Korten came to realize that the crisis of deepening poverty, inequality, environmental devastation, and social disintegration he observed in Asia was playing out in nearly every country in the world — including the United States and other “developed” countries. Furthermore, he concluded that the United States was actively promoting — both at home and abroad — the very policies that were deepening the crisis. If there were to be a positive human future, the United States must change. He returned to the United States in 1992 to share with his fellow Americans the lessons he had learned abroad.

  Korten’s publications are required reading in university courses around the world. He has written numerous books, including the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community,and The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism.He contributes regularly to edited books and professional journals, and to a wide variety of periodical publications. He is also a popular international speaker and a regular guest on talk radio and television.

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