“Malloch’s injection of the virtue of thrift in today’s public dialogue will challenge us to renovate our economic house, repair our appetites and help us search for what is of real value. Somehow, this forgotten virtue has me humbled at its simplicity and enthusiastic about the power of an historic idea poised to live again. This is the wise work of one of our true public intellectuals.”
— MICHAEL VAN PELT,President, Cardus/Work Research Foundation
Despite the calls for massive spending and “stimulus,” if the current financial crisis has taught us anything it is that it is imperative to save, not just spend bailouts. In fact, over the years thrift has become America’s lost or forgotten virtue, rarely mentioned and never celebrated, despite its true historical significance. In Thrift, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch looks at the history of thrift from its roots in the Scottish enlightenment to the no-waste credo of Sam Walton. Thrift, Malloch argues, provides the resources to ultimately stimulate prosperity. Even if the government manages to shock our economy back to life, Americans will require discipline, accountability and farsightedness — all natural products of thrift — to right its course for generations to come. In an age when corruption and ineptitude have crowded out thrift, Malloch’s important book is lively, topical, and immediately useful.
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is chairman and CEO of the Global Fiduciary Governance LLC. He headed consulting at Wharton-Chase Econometrics and has worked in capital markets at Salomon Brothers. Dr. Malloch has held positions at the United Nations and has served in senior policy positions in the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and in the U.S. Department of State. He is a research professor at Yale University and at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont.
Photo Credits:
Author Photo by Julie Right, Abbey of London
Cover Art © Mike Kemp/ Rubberball Productions/ Getty Images
Cover Design by Tamaye Perry
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