"Can one be both an ethical person and an effective
businessperson? Stephen Green, an ordained priest and the chairman
of HSBC, thinks so. In Good Value, Green confronts some of the most
vexing questions of our age and argues that despite its recent
lapses, the global financial industry is more necessary than ever.
Also necessary, however, are good businesspeople who look to their
principles and not just their profit margins." "In order to
understand the turbulence of the present, Green begins by retracing
the history of the global economy and its financial systems, from
ancient government granaries in Alexandria to the Italian banks
that flourished during the Renaissance. He finds that free markets
are a persistent phenomenon throughout history. A highly efficient
allocator of capital that has delivered huge advantages to
humanity, the marketplace has also abandoned over a billion people
to extreme poverty, encouraged overconsumption and debt, ravaged
the environment, and allowed the greed and short-sightedness of the
financial elite to squander the trust upon which the global economy
is built." How do we reconcile the demands of capitalism with both
the common good and our own spiritual and psychological needs as
individuals? To answer that question, and many others that it
sparks, Green takes us on a lively and erudite journey through
history, looking for lessons in the work of economists and
philosophers, businessmen and poets, theologians and novelists,
playwrights and political scientists. By synthesizing the wisdom of
great thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Adam Smith, Goethe to
Thomas Friedman, Green charts a path toward a "new capitalism" that
would maximize profits andshareholder value while simultaneously
helping the less fortunate and bringing new meaning to our lives.
He bolsters his ideas with stories from his own career as well as
anecdotes about microfinance, green technology, and a number of
remarkable individuals who have changed the world by using the
lessons they''ve learned in the global bazaar.
內容試閱：
Good Value Reflections on Money, Morality, and an Uncertain
World By STEPHEN GREEN Atlantic Monthly Press Copyright ? 2010
Stephen Green All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8021-1917-9 Chapter
One In My Beginning Is My End We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot-"Little Gidding"
1942 Lake Como. Spring 2008. April. Eliot''s cruellest month.
Twilight falling. From the shore, the lights of Brunate in the
distance are just beginning to flicker into life. Shadows lengthen
in the gardens of the Villa d''Este. Everywhere the soothing
influence of the pleasure principle is clearly in evidence. Despite
all the beauties that nature provides in Lombardy without any human
intervention, there is very little here that has escaped the
improving hands of painters, architects, gardeners and sculptors.
With names that sound like expensive puddings, luxurious retreats
line the shores-Villa Carlotta, Villa del Balbianello, Villa Melzi,
Villa Serbelloni. The lake has entranced the cream of European
aristocratic and cultural circles for two millennia, from Pliny to
George IV to Stendhal and Liszt. The Villa d''Este at Cernobbio,
commissioned in the sixteenth century by Cardinal Tolomeo Galli, is
now aluxury hotel. Under vaulted ceilings, past statues of sleeping
nymphs and over gravelled paths, the guests come and go. If the
story of humankind is how far we have come from the freezing cave
and the daily chase, then here at least it is easy to forget that
either ever existed. Why am I here? Another seminar on commerce and
finance: another of those Davos-like gatherings that bring together
the usual suspects-politicians, financiers and economists-to
discuss the state of the world. Champagne and discretion. The
rainmakers of global capitalism can wander among the azaleas,
camellias, oleanders, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, roses and jasmine
bushes, and confide their fears and hopes to each other. It is a
time of retreat, and a time to share. A place to relax, to take
stock, perhaps to plan, perhaps to deal. This year, more so than
anyone can remember, the mood is bleak. The rumble of approaching
economic thunder is the basso continuo of all discussions. Over ten
years of growth and untrammelled consumer expansion may be coming
to an end. Nobody should be surprised. All over the world the
economic news has been foreboding. A new double-barrelled word has
entered the conversation, spreading fear like a sort of plague.
This word is "subprime." Two years ago, most members of the public
had never heard of it. At the Villa d''Este it is on everyone''s
lips. Already several hundred billion dollars have been written off
by financial institutions as a result of mortgage-payment defaults
and huge write-downs of mortgage-backed asset values. The figure is
to get much larger. US banks have just reported the worst quarterly
performance since 1990. Banks in the US, the UK and Germany have
had to be rescued from collapse and have lost their independence.
And much more is to come. The scale of the unfolding crisis is
alarming. The International Monetary Fund has delivered one of its
gloomiest forecasts ever. It says bluntly that the troubles that
erupted into the open in August 2007 now look like they are
developing into the largest financial shock to the system for
decades. It predicts that the liquidity squeeze will lead to a
full-blown credit crunch in the advanced economies. It predicts
recession in the US later in the year, and only slow recovery
thereafter. It says that weakening growth in advanced economies
will have knock-on effects on the large emerging economies,
particularly in Asia and Latin America. It concludes that the heady
growth rates that the world has come to take for granted are-at
least for the time being-a thing of the past. Worrying, too, is the
parlous state of consumer confidence. There is wide agreement that
the housing sector is in serious decline in several advanced
economies. After many years of rapid price increases, with all the
confident investment and spending that result, real investment in
housing is now falling in countries as diverse as the United
States, Britain, Australia, Spain and Ireland. The US Commerce
Department has just released figures showing that the number of new
houses remaining unsold in the US is now at its highest level in a
quarter of a century. At the same time there are increasing fears
of inflation, for the price of oil is soaring. Consumption is
forecast to increase relentlessly by 1.2 million barrels a day this
year, to a new record of 87.2 million barrels a day. Prices are at
record levels-flirting with $120 a barrel-and yet supply is not
rising. In the US, experts are predicting a rise to over $4 a
gallon at the gasoline pump by the end of the summer and, according
to one, $7 a gallon in the next four years. More worrying still is
the apparent paralysis of supply in the non-OPEC countries, such as
Russia, Norway and Mexico. Strikes by oil workers in Nigeria have
shut down around 1.7 percent of the world''s production. How will
all this end? And there is an even worse spectre abroad: food
prices. The United Nations Food Agency is warning that, across the
world, escalating food prices threaten to force 100 million people
to go hungry. Analysts are predicting that the days of relatively
cheap food are over. Rice prices have already nearly tripled in a
year. Wheat and vegetable oil are due to continue their steady
rise. In poor countries there are food riots. More are predicted.
Even in rich countries the effects are noticeable. In Britain, the
Times devotes an entire front page to the report that food price
inflation has pushed up the average weekly UK shopping bill by 15
percent in a year-not life-threatening, but quite enough to sour
the mood of any electorate. In this mountainous corner of European
civilization, this showcase of some of humanity''s finest artifacts,
we are feeling the first tremors of an economic earthquake. No one
is going so far as to say that the walls of the citadel will come
tumbling down. However, no one is going to guarantee its perpetual
stability with quite as much confidence as they might have done
just a year earlier. And it is not only the actors of the financial
world who are affected. Shocks to the global financial system will
eventually affect us all, from suburban families in America to
small businesses in China, to Greek shipowners and to Russian
oligarchs. Somewhere deep down, the question gnaws away: If, with
all the technology and sophistication at our disposal, the basic
structure of the world economy is built upon sand, not rock, then
what is the justification for all our labours? For all of us who
work directly or tangentially in the financial system, how can
everything we relied on be so swiftly under threat? Milan. The
world capital of pizzazz. The Piazza del Duomo. The same spring
2008. The same April. Midday. All the life of the city seems to
gather here, along with many of Lombardy''s pigeons. Palatial
nineteenth-century buildings flank two sides of the spacious
square. Giuseppe Mengoni''s soaring 30-metre high shopping arcade,
the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a cathedral of commerce that has
become home to Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and other minor
divinities popular in Italy, emerges on to the square through a
triumphal archway. In the midst of the piazza is a statue on
horseback of Vittorio himself, Italy''s boisterous first king.
Underground, though, are the foundations of the fourth-century
Basilica di Santa Tecla, where St. Augustine had been baptized
sixteen hundred years before. And then, drawing all eyes and
dominating the space as powerfully as if it were a vision of
paradise, the breathtaking architectural masterpiece of Milan''s
duomo, an extraordinary tracery of stone and glass rising
majestically through the spring sunshine. Good journalist that he
was, Mark Twain noted his first impression: "What a wonder it is!
So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so
graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems ... a
delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a b
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