 |
Today’s economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. However, as David Korten shows, the steps being taken to address it – including pouring trillions of dollars into bailouts for the Wall Street institutions that created the mess – do nothing to deal with the reality of a failed economic system.
Korten identifies the deeper sources of the failure: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating phantom “wealth” without producing anything of real value. Their seeming success created an economic mirage that led us to believe the economy was expanding exponentially, even as our economic, social, and natural capital eroded and most people struggled ever harder to make ends meet
In his new book, The Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, Korten asserts that our hope lies not with Wall Street, but with Main Street: real wealth from real resources to meet real needs. He outlines an agenda to bring into being a new economy—locally based, community-oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits. It will require courageous and imaginative changes to how we measure economic success, organize our financial system, even the very way we create money.
About David Korten:
David Korten is a leading critic of corporate globalization and a visionary proponent of a planetary system of local living economies. His international best seller When Corporations Rule the World , sometimes referred to as the bible of the historic Seattle WTO protest, helped frame the global resistance against corporate globalization. His most recent book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, illuminates the significance of this resistance by placing it in the historical context of 5,000 years of Empire and the organization of human relationships by dominator hierarchy.
David is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. He is also a founding associate of the International Forum on Globalization and a major contributor to its report on Alternatives to Economic Globalization.
In his earlier career, David acquired a variety of establishment credentials, including MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Stanford Business School, service as a captain in the US Air Force, and five years as a Harvard Business School professor, a Ford Foundation project specialist, and Asia regional adviser on development management to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thirty years working as a development professional in Asia, Africa, and Latin America eventually opened his eyes to the devastating consequences of an economic system designed to make rich people richer without regard to the human and environmental consequences. He became a defector from the foreign aid establishment and joined the global resistance against flawed development models.
Many Thanks to the Cosponsors of this event!
Comments on this entry are closed.