Dtek Industries

i'd never heard of him or his book before, but David Korten spoke some salient sanity on Democracy Now! today. the book is called Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth and at first glance it sounds great.

from today's DN:

This is part of understanding the current Wall Street system, which is built around an illusion, the illusion that money is wealth, which then translates into the idea that people who are creating—or who are making money are in fact creating wealth. And what Wall Street has become extremely expert at is creating money out of nothing through financial bubbles, through pyramiding lending to create fictitious assets that become collateral for more bank lending, and then combining that with the predatory aspects of usurious lending and deceptive lending and the use of credit cards as a substitute for a living wage—all the games that Wall Street is playing. And it’s actually based on a philosophy that says we don’t need to produce anything as a country, if we can—you know, if we can do all this financial innovation that allows us to create financial assets without producing anything of real value. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. And yet, it is the—it’s been the foundation of our economic policy in this country for decades now.

these sound like exactly the kind of ideas that we're all tuning in to now, and that we need to push hard at this particular historical moment. maybe a bit pollyannaish (Amy Goodman draws him out on this a bit), but so obviously correct. certainly piqued my curiosity enough to get on my list.