Web of Wealth

Article on Noreena Hertz from Fast Company, November 2009. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/140/cassandras-revenge.html Hertz -- part activist, part detective -- argues that both economics and business need to be put back into the human social context. "Over the past 30 years, economics became a narrow field completely out of touch with reality," says Hertz, 41, who sees the discipline as a jigsaw puzzle. "I don't believe you can reduce the world to a mathematical formula. I start with the world, assume it's complicated, and ask where can I get help from a whole range of disciplines." Drawing on subjects as diverse as anthropology, physics, geopolitics, and neurology, Hertz's economic vision is at once eclectic and holistic, which may explain her apparent ability to foresee dangers and opportunities others do not. It is also relentlessly pointed, serving an explicit agenda -- making corporations realize that they can no longer operate in their Adam Smith -- designed bubble.