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
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. 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
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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