Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
Why Wall Street Can’t Be Fixed and How to Replace It

Today’s economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression.  However, as David Korten shows, the steps being taken to address it do nothing to deal with the reality of a failed economic system. It’s like treating cancer with Band-Aids.

Korten identifies the deeper sources of the failure: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating “wealth” without producing anything of real value: phantom wealth.  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 Barack Obama were able to deliver.

Korten’s new book is available from the publisher here: http://www.bkconnection.com/ProdDetails.asp?ID=9781605092898

ISBN 978-1-60509-289-8