THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

· However, there is also a growing awareness of the deadly trap
that a Corporate Millennium means for the credibility of the media.
'Establishing credibility means developing a reputation for providing
correct information, even when it may reflect badly on the
information provider.'l31 In short, in an information age, credibility is
the real capital. And playing to the corporate agenda for short-term
financial benefits is squandering that capital, which is potentially
irretrievable. Peter Bhatia, member of the Board of Directors of the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, says: 'Our credibility is as
low as it's ever been. There is a lot of soul-searching going on right
now in our industry. The Columbia Journalism Review called the
censorship that results from corporate-editorial co-operation 'The Big
Squeeze'." In a democracy, what is ultimately at stake is the
legitimacy of both the media and the corporations.
· In a remarkable exception, lime magazine published a whole
special report on 'Corporate Welfare'. It defines corporate welfare as
'any action by local, state and federal government that gives a
corporation or an entire industry, a grant, real estate, a low-interest
loan or a government service. It can also be a tax break.' The
conclusions: ‘the Federal Government alone shells out $120 billion
per year in corporate welfare ... The justification for much of this
welfare is that the US government is creating jobs ...’
But the actual numbers tell another story (see sidebar).
Autonomous corporate power
· David Korten, a Ph.D. from Stanford Business School, who also
taught at Harvard Business School before serving with the Ford
Foundation and the US AID programme in Asia, concludes that 'the
contemporary corporation increasingly exists as an entity apart even
from the people who compose it. Every member of the corporate