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Time to put the heart back into the economy |
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Written by Cheryl Kernot
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Friday, 05 December 2008 |
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In the following article, published in the Sydney Morning Herald today, Cheryl Kernot clearly describes one of the core platforms of a successful future -- as the Futures Foundation has been arguing for the past twelve years. It should have happened earlier, but it is still encouraging to find the argument in the pages of a major daily newspaper. And as Hazel Henderson has pointed out, the current financial crisis also offers an opportunity for this kind of change.
Capitalism is more than just bruised, as some suggest. It is battered, almost down for the count. It has sustained serious brand damage after suffering the indignity of state intervention to save banks, car manufacturers and commercial child-care providers.
Capitalism helped deliver the prosperity and freedoms taken for granted in developed economies but it also delivered an escalating inequity in how the planet's resources and opportunities are shared.
We now have an opportunity to take stock of its excesses and failures and to redesign its boundaries. We can move beyond the dichotomies of free or regulated, private or public, and demand a more creative and fair capitalism; one that includes social value and impact when assessing prosperity and freedoms. Most of us instinctively reject the one-dimensional primacy of financial value.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 05 December 2008 )
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Global Trends 2025: We can do it - but will we? |
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Written by Jan Lee Martin
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Monday, 24 November 2008 |
One of the best things about the US intelligence community’s report,
Global Trends 2025, is that it is finally winning attention from
international media for the news that really matters (561 stories at
last count). Unfortunately, though, some of them have chosen to
highlight the sensational. Even the respected Times of London
thundered doom and disaster...
“The next two decades will see a world living with the daily
threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of
America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly
bleak assessment by the US intelligence community,” it said. “The
world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of
conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted
by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater
access to nuclear weapons...”said Times Online.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 24 November 2008 )
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The good news: chance to reform global casino |
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Written by Hazel Henderson
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Saturday, 01 November 2008 |
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Senior futurist Hazel Henderson has been writing and speaking about the fatal flaws of traditional economics for many years now. Finally others are beginning to join the dots... but the global financial crisis has swept over the more measured change of tide that had already begun in such areas as ethical investment, corporate social responsibility, micro-funding and more. So what does this far-sighted expert see in the crisis? Characteristically, she sees opportunity within the challenge..... "this global financial crisis brings opportunities... to reform today's global casino and restore
finance to its vital but limited role in facilitating real production
and innovation in the world's real economies."
November 15, 2008, will at last see a summit on how to reform failed
global finance. Invited to the USA, the heart of the failures, by
President George W. Bush will be the "leaders" of global finance.
Architects of the failure range from economic globalization enthusiasts
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan and free market
Chicago School de-regulators and privatizers. Add Wall Street
"financial engineers" and quants who "innovated" all those
mortgage-backed and credit card-backed securities and the $60 trillion
of credit default swaps.
Well-meaning Democrats, trying to democratize home ownership through
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA-subsidized mortgages, played into the
hands of unscrupulous non-bank mortgage mills. The Federal Reserve
failed to use its power to oversee this shadow banking system which
included Wall Street's huge investment banks. Under Alan Greenspan and
now "helicopter" Ben Bernanke, the Fed kept interest rates too low and
robbed savers in order to keep the debt-laden US economy afloat.
So, where should the summiteers begin their reforms on November 15th?
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 01 November 2008 )
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