Agenda for a new Economy : From phantom wealth to real wealth. A Declaration of Independence from Wall Street

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. It’s like treating cancer with band aids. And the financial collapse now in the public spotlight is only the tip of the iceberg. The system’s social and environmental failures may ultimately be even more destructive.

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. Its major players engage in speculative trading, buy into asset bubbles, create debt pyramids, and engage in predatory lending practices. 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. What Others Are Saying About Agenda for a New Economy

Our hope lies not with Wall Street, Korten argues, but with Main Street, which creates real wealth from real resources to meet real needs. He outlines an agenda to liberate the latent entrepreneurial energies of Main Street from Wall Street’s deadly grip and 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. Korten outlines a challenging, but practical agenda summarized at the end of the book in his version of the economic address to the nation he wishes Barak Obama were able to deliver.

Korten’s intention is not to offer final answers, but rather to provoke discussion of options that powerful interests prefer not be mentioned. These interests devised the system that has brought us to the brink of ruin. It’s time to turn away from the Wall Street system of phantom wealth and return to an economy firmly rooted in the long-term health of people and the planet.

Contents

Preface

PART I : The Case for a New Economy

Looking Upstream

Modern Alchemists and the Sport of Moneymaking

A Real-Market Alternative

More Than Tinkering at the Margins

PART II : The Case for Eliminating Wall Street

What Wall Street Really Wants

Buccaneers and Privateers

The High Cost of Phantom Wealth

The End of Empire

PART III : Agenda for a Real-Wealth Economy

What People Really Want

Essential Priorities

Liberating Main Street

Real-Wealth Financial Services

Life in a Real-Wealth Economy

PART IV : Change the Story, Change the Future

An Address I Hope President Obama Will One Day Deliver to the Nation [Read an exerpt from the Address]

When the People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow