Good Value
Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"An unusual and thoughtful disquisition on how to conduct oneself in a world of high finance and ambition." —The Wall Street Journal
A Financial Times Book of the Year
Can one be both an ethical person and an effective businessperson? As an ordained priest and former bank chairman, Stephen Green thinks so.
In Good Value, Green retraces the history of the global economy and its financial systems, and shows that while the marketplace has delivered huge advantages to humanity, it has also abandoned over a billion people to extreme poverty, encouraged overconsumption and debt, and ravaged the environment.
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, and some of the most vexing questions of our age, 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. An essential business book by a man who is uniquely qualified to write it, Good Value is a timely and persuasive analysis of the most pressing financial and moral questions we face.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beginning with the recent financial crisis, Green, the former CEO of HSBC and an ordained Anglican priest, launches into a deeply reflective examination of globalization, urbanization, and the market economy. Drawing on a diverse range of sources from the Koran to The Wealth of Nations, T.S. Eliot to Thomas Friedman and placing market vicissitudes into a broad historical context, he contends that globalization has passed the point of no return and that, despite its flaws and failings, the market economy is the best economic arrangement available. Green pivots to consider the importance of corporate and personal responsibility in an increasingly interdependent world. Though the author does describe the Christian foundations for his own metaphysical and ethical views, he spends more time discussing Goethe's Faust than any Gospel. Green never calls for any particular reform; rather he makes an inspiring and erudite case for individuals to make moral sense of their lives and strive to make a better world despite the inherent imperfections in human nature and the globalized marketplace.
