AGENDA FOR A NEW ECONOMY: FROM PHANTOM WEALTH TO REAL WEALTH KORTEN D.C. Księgarnia

Nearly two years after the financial meltdown, economic recovery still seems a distant promise. Desperate, overwhelming need for change has not overcome Washington’s timid preference for the status quo. Joblessness and foreclosures remain endemic, and each day brings scandalous new revelations of outrageous Wall Street bonuses and corruption.

Issued as a report of the New Economy Working group, this substantially updated and expanded new edition of Agenda for a New Economy is a call for a national Declaration of Independence from Wall Street.

What is needed, Korten argues, is a system that favors life values over financial values, roots power in people and community, and supports local resilience and self-organization within a framework of living markets and democracy. The new edition is a handbook for a nonviolent Main Street revolution – because change, as he explains, will not come from above. It will come from below.

The root of the problem, as detailed extensively in the first edition of Agenda for a New Economy, remains what it was in 2008: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating “phantom wealth”—mere numbers on paper—without producing anything of real value and without any thought of the social consequences. In the new edition, Korten examines how events since September 2008 have proven that the predatory Wall Street leopard cannot change its spots and explains why a visionary new president opted for marginal reform. He fleshes out his vision of the alternative to the corporate Wall Street economy: a Main Street economy based on locally owned, community-oriented “living enterprises” whose success is measured as much by their positive impact on people and the environment as by their positive balance sheets. Most importantly, he offers a groundbreaking plan as to what we as citizens can do to break through the political paralysis and replace the phantom-wealth Wall Street system with a living-wealth Main Street system that is responsive to the needs and values of ordinary people.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Prologue A Question of Values 1

Part I The Case for a New Economy 13

1 Looking Upstream 15

2 Modern Alchemists and the Sport of Moneymaking 26

3 A Real-Market Alternative 43

4 More Than Tinkering at the Margins 55

Part II The Case for Replacing Wall Street 65

5 What Wall Street Really Wants 67

6 Buccaneers and Privateers 80

7 The High Cost of Phantom Wealth 88

8 The End of Empire 101

9 Greed Is Not a Virtue; Sharing Is Not a Sin 113

Part III A Living-Economy Vision 125

10 What People Really Want 127

11 At Home on a Living Earth 138

12 New Vision, New Priorities 151

Part IV A Living-Economy Agenda 165

13 Seven Points of Intervention 167

14 What About My . . . ? 186

15 A Presidential Declaration of Independence from Wall Street I Hope I May One Day Hear 206

Part V Navigating Uncharted Waters 219

16 When the People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow 222

17 A Visionary President Meets Realpolitik 233

18 Change the Story, Change the Future 245

19 Learning to Live, Living to Learn 258

Epilogue: The View From 2084 274

Notes 285

Index 297

About the Author 309

310 pages, Paperback

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