Lynn, Barry C.

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Lynn, Barry C.

PERSONAL: Married; children: two.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Office—New America Foundation, 1630 Connecticut Ave. N.W., 7th Fl., Washington, DC 20009. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Business writer. New American Foundation, Washington, DC, fellow. Former executive editor, Global Business magazine, 1974–81; former reporter, Associated Press and Agence France Presse. Consultant to governments and businesses in France, Japan, India, and elsewhere.

AWARDS, HONORS: Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.

WRITINGS:

End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, Financial Times, Mother Jones, and American Prospect.

SIDELIGHTS: Barry C. Lynn takes a cautionary approach to the globalization of corporations in his book End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation. Lynn, a former reporter and observer of international business trends, examines the potential pitfalls of an economy calibrated to worldwide proportions in search of expanding profit margins and dedicated to increasing shareholder value. Lynn's concerns include obvious issues such as outsourcing of American jobs to cheaper overseas subcontractors and the stagnation of American wages, but he also discusses the implications of natural disasters, political upheaval, and even epidemics, on societies that rely more on specialization than on self-sustenance. A critic of the "free trade" agreements negotiated by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Lynn advocates using economic tools, regulating executive compensation, and anticipating how the global movement of goods and services could be disrupted. He demonstrates that the "vertically integrated corporation," localized in one community, provides local stability and national self-reliance.

Washington Post contributor Harold Meyerson recommended End of the Line to readers who want "a clear understanding of this brave new world economy." Meyerson went on to praise Lynn's work as a "painstakingly reported, utterly unpuffy look at the modern, outsourcing global corporation." Writing in the Washington Examiner, Dustin Weaver stated that the volume offers "a revealing look at the gritty realities of the globalized economy." Weaver concluded: "The book is meticulously researched, intelligently argued and entertaining to boot."