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　　"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.

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　　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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　　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. (Feb.)

书籍介绍

Can one be both an ethical person and a banker? Stephen Green, an ordained priest and chairman of HSBC, thinks so. In Good Value, Green retraces the history of the global economy and its financial systems, from early government granaries in Alexandria to the Italian banks that flourished during the Renaissance, and argues that despite its recent lapses, the financial industry is more necessary than ever. Also necessary, however, are good business-people who look to their principles before their profit margins. By recognizing the precedence of moral and spiritual values over immediate profit, Green says, we have the opportunity to remake capitalism while also helping the less fortunate and finding meaning in our own lives. He backs up his ideas for a "new capitalism" with 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. A timely, thoughtful, and contrarian analysis of the most pressing financial and moral questions we face, Good Value presents us with the heartening possibility that through good ethics comes good business, and through good business comes a richer, more rewarding world for us all.