The Futures Foundation

Time to put the heart back into the economy
Written by Cheryl Kernot   
Friday, 05 December 2008

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.

Last Updated ( Friday, 05 December 2008 )
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Global Trends 2025: We can do it - but will we?
Written by Jan Lee Martin   
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.
Last Updated ( Monday, 24 November 2008 )
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The good news: chance to reform global casino
Written by Hazel Henderson   
Saturday, 01 November 2008

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? 

Last Updated ( Saturday, 01 November 2008 )
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