We live in an economy where intangible assets account for two-thirds of companies’ stock value and, consequently, the wealth of a society. Examples of such assets include intellectual capital, innovation, creativity, trust, motivation of team members, corporate culture and anthropological sensitivity. Accounting systems used now were designed to be used for the Industrial Era, thus they can register tangible assets, such as machines and buildings; but do not place value on management, leadership and the psychological capital accumulated by the people working in a company.

In this new economy, scholars are disconcerted because the creation of value no longer involves combinations of capital and work, but also incorporates a variety of intangibles, including brands, capacity for innovation and corporate self-esteem, among others. In financial markets, interconnected in real time within the CNN world we live in, the psychological factor supporting trust, an essential intangible asset, must not be underestimated. This is especially so when it comes to explaining the current phenomena which Industrial Era economists are incapable of understanding and explaining to others. It is almost a Copernican change, which has not yet been properly processed.

Because of this, in the last APEC meeting, several leaders were resorting to Friedman’s and Keynes’ economy to explain the financial crisis, but, as Mexican President Felipe Calderón said, we must look for better answers in Dr. Freud’s work. Today’s economy is far more complex and requires an inter-disciplinary approach; I would even dare say an Erasmus of Rotterdam’s type of Renaissance approach. This demands resorting to several sciences, including mathematics, anthropology, history, sociology and computer engineering.

The famous “ceteris paribus”, which dictates that all other variables, including people’s likes and dislikes, are constant, gives Keynes’ and Friedman’s economy a mathematical elegance, but is incapable and inefficient in the era of intangibles and the Internet. Therefore, I have found better explanations to the present crisis in people, such as scholar and historian Luis Enrique Tord, than in econometric models that cannot incorporate the growing complexity. New economic models are just now being developed thanks to computational power that introduces and gives mathematical weight to the observations of psychologists, anthropologists and historians. No 21st century Adam Smiths or David Ricardos have risen yet to help us fully understand the new economy of intangibles. In that sense, I agree with President Alan García’s thesis upheld during the last APEC meeting, where he said that the First World crisis is the result of growing pains of a new economy that will demand an absolutely different approach from entrepreneurial and political leaders. Only those who are able to detect the emerging demographical and socio-cultural megatrends will be in a position to capitalize on the wonderful opportunities that arise in this new era of intangibles. Politicians and entrepreneurs will have to learn not only from Ban Ki Moon and Warren Buffet, but also from Erasmus, Luis Enrique Tord and Freud.