The Currency Fix: The invisible hand doesn't mean that profiteers get to reach into your pocket with every trade. Yet, that's the economy we've built: one where you bear a collective responsibility for the decisions of bankers, beancounters, and other borrowers. Why? Because you have to invest, consume, and earn in a national currency, which can whipsaw up, down, or sideways, leaving you and your savings at the mercy of the state and the crony capitalists that control it.

The Governance Graft: Hey, look -- it's another megacorporation melting down...yawn. The real question is: why are institutional shareholders asleep at the wheel? There's only one economic answer: because they cannot bear increasingly steep costs of corporate governance. When shareholders meet a handful of times a year, when corporations report thin, bogus info -- and hedge funds barely have to report anything at all -- when CEOs wield power over boards, when boards are composed of golfing buddies, governance, in the simplest sense of the word, is simply uneconomical -- and shareholders tune out and turn off.

The Speculation Racket: Speculation is healthy, right? Not so fast. Every dollar dumped into speculation also has an opportunity cost: though it might offset risk, or reveal better info, it's not employed directly in productive economic activity. For example, when I buy a share from you, that capital doesn't flow to the firm to fund new projects, but to you. The corporation in question benefits only (very) indirectly -- and so bad management is punished, but good management isn't fully rewarded.

The new business environment, commonly referred to as the New Economy, is changing all areas of the organization. Companies now create value with information as opposed to processes, have transformed their organizational structure, have changed the nature of competition, and have altered the social contract between employees and employers. This new business environment is created by a series of closed-loop, nonlinear dynamics. For managers to effectively manage in this environment, they must understand the circular processes driving their organization's behavior. Upon doing so, managers can make better decisions, develop a more comprehensive set of performance measures, and simulate complex business decisions in a risk-free environment.