The King's English Bookshop

The forces that brought us to our present catastrophe are clearly laid out in David Korten's latest book. He points out that Wall Street, as it works today, is a totally unregulated world where so-called "wealth" is so disassociated from products and services that often there's not even a possibility of connecting debts and investments to reality. Far from the economic vision laid out by Adam Smith--or by Thomas Jefferson--ours is currently a system that puts money into a few hands at the cost of many. And our system is broken. Korten is full of ideas for returning us to a world in which money is related to goods and services rather than to unbridled speculation. We've been browbeaten, he asserts, into believing that there are only two choices in economic theory: Capitalism and Communism. Wrong, he says. A Main Street Market Economy, one that is tied to real goods and services, is far superior to either. If you're interested in how we came to the current crisis in which we find ourselves, and how we might recover from its consequences, read Agenda for a New Economy. You may not agree with everything Korten says; I don't. But I guarantee you'll find it interesting. - Betsy Burton, Barrett-Koehler Publishers, $14.95