Letter to Charlie Rose, news commentator

Mr Rose,

I am watching your interview tonight with Ken Rogoff. While I appreciate his expertise as an economist, he is disappointing to hear for his lack of insight to our current situation. Nonetheless, I will certainly investigate his latest book for his perspective on past financial crises. However, he seems to only offer the same old tired saw: we must grow our way out of this crisis.

I wish to suggest this a failed economic paradigm. With 6.8 billion people on the planet, and projected to reach 9 billion within a generation, when are the mainstream economists going to wake up and smell the coffee? Unlimited economic growth by all is no longer viable. What will take its place?

In a nutshell: ecological economics. You should check it out, as I predict it will be the economics of the 21st century, if we survive as a species. I know I'm just an unimportant, unknown voice, but I have followed economic trends closely all my adult life, teach environmental economics at a local community college, and get incredibly frustrated by hearing such a lack on ideas in the mainstream media -- particularly when it's on more progressive shows such as your's.

Honestly, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! gets economic commentators who are better at speaking the truth -- such as John Perkins whom she had on just this morning. His new book Hookwinked looks to be much more insightful and honest about the brutish reality of our harsh economic system.

However, if you would like to have a truly original, fresh and honest economic perspective on your show -- from a man who has seen the future, who is not trapped in old paradigms of the past and speaks from a lifetime of experience in American economic dealings -- you cannot do better than David Korten. If you have not heard of him, you should -- before it is too late, and the Great Unraveling has irreversibly begun.

Sincerely,
-- Rick Casey

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