Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
"Once you accept that growth will cease, all of the current ‘common sense’ assumptions about investing, such as the assumption of making money from money, cease to be true."
•The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it •Limits to Investment •Alive in the Sunshine
The second in a 3-part series of teleseminars on economic transformation. Only a fundamental shift in the design of the monetary and banking systems will allow for a viable way of addressing increasing inequality, the mounting problem of public and private debt and make possible a shift towards a sustainable steady-state economy that works for everybody and is compatible with environmental stewardship.
Money is currently produced by a ‘public-private partnership’ between the state and the financial sector, a partnership whose nature remains obscure to the great majority of the population.
By ‘Open Source Finance’, I don’t just mean open source software programmes. Rather, I’m referring to something much deeper and broader. It’s a way of framing an overall change we might want to see in the financial system.
Nicole Foss and Laurence Boomert highlight community initiatives that can help people meet basic needs, even as monetary institutions pursue desperation measures. Then, John Michael Greer joins us … to highlight the lack of whole systems thinking in internet visionaries after Seth and Justin discuss the money illusion.
Most internet start-ups believe there is only one path to financing their company’s growth: start with friends and family, move on to wealthy angel investors, attract venture capital, and finally sell the company so the investors can make a killing. The good news is that there is an alternative path…
•New Study Predicts Year Your City’s Climate Will Change •STUDY: Media Sowed Doubt In Coverage Of UN Climate Report •Plan to use financial markets to halt climate change is ‘doomed’ •Are There Any Major World Financial Institutions That Don’t Want To Act On Climate? •Rate of ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years
Three dams are about to break, and in each case a calamity is being postponed—though not, in these cases, by the heroic digits of fictitious Dutch children.
•Former Mobil VP Warns of Fracking and Climate Change •’Generous’ tax breaks for shale gas industry outlined •USGS Study Connects Earthquake Risk To Wastewater Injection, Fracking Advocates Say, "Who Cares?" •This Is What Fracking Really Looks Like
Interview with Fred Pearce as detailed in his recent book: The Land Grabbers, followed by Gregor Macdonald about the global energy trends
There have been a lot of talks about banks lately in France, both because of the Cypriot debacle and because the minister in charge of the French IRS has been caught red-handed hiding a substantial amount of money in some Swiss bank.
