SUNDAY MARCH 1ST, 2009
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For Immediate Release Contact: Polly Jones 1-800-729-2615 (U.S.A. & Canada only) 207-594-6658 ext. 133 Rockland, Maine, U.S.A.--What started as an economic recession has become an ethics recession--a full-blown collapse of integrity and responsibility that is now shaping the way we need to think about and respond to this crisis--argues award-winning journalist and author Rushworth M. Kidder. In his timely new book THE ETHICS RECESSION: REFLECTIONS ON THE MORAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS (136 pages; $13.95), he makes the case that, with each passing day, the current economic crisis is moving from issues of money to issues of integrity. Kidder reflects on the abandonment of responsibility and the failures of moral courage that underlie the financial numbers. He also identifies the kind of changes required to bring us through this crisis--changes not only in personal ethics but in our collective culture of integrity. Until the fall of 2008, Kidder observes, the recession was typically reported, discussed, and analyzed as though it were simply a question of failures of prosperity and wealth creation. But as examples began piling up of failures of private character and public responsibility--from Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to Wall Street's excessive bonuses--the public conversation has, he writes, "moved irreversibly from finance to integrity." In the earlier months, the crisis was framed through what Kidder calls "the two default languages of journalism"--the language of economics, which asks, "What's the bottom line?" or the language of politics, which asks, "Where's the power?" Now, Kidder argues, we're increasingly using a third language--the language of ethics--to ask, "What is right?" This shift, he argues, should not surprise us. "Crisis invites introspection," he writes. "As the markets tumble, credit freezes, and pundits mutter about the end of free-market economics, individuals and nations are revisiting their principles. What they're finding is an age-old truth: At times of momentous challenge, there's a tremendous yearning for straight-up integrity and sound ethics analysis." "In assembling these pieces," Kidder writes in the introduction, "I've been struck by the way that each week's news kept building the case for an ethics recession. Perhaps that's not surprising: Journalism is always the first draft of history. I've also been struck by the heartfelt cri de coeur that has been rising around this topic. As I was preparing this book, I kept noticing how many voices from across the political spectrum were speaking out in search of an ethical framework for our times." Written with Kidder's trademark fluidity, penetrating analysis, and eye for detail, this book is aimed at professionals and non-specialists alike--for all those who are seeking frameworks for understanding the current crisis, seeing its larger meaning, and finding the way through it. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kidder, whose weekly columns on social issues and trends began appearing in The Christian Science Monitor newspaper in the early 1980s, is the author of nine books and president of the Institute for Global Ethics, a non-partisan, non-sectarian nonprofit think-tank he founded in Camden, Maine in 1990. This book brings together thirty of his columns from Ethics Newsline®, the Institute's electronic newsletter that reports ethics news each week from around the world. ### The Ethics Recession: Reflections on the Moral Underpinnings of the Current Economic Crisis By Rushworth M. Kidder Publisher: Institute for Global Ethics Publication date: March 2, 2009 Price: $13.95, Paperback Pages: 136 ISBN: 978-0-615-27535-2
