[CRNMC] A Financial System That Works For Everybody - Event

[Charles Cresson Wood]

Event Title: Prospering and Flourishing in Unpredictable Financial Times
[A Mendocino Coast Transition Towns event]
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Event Description: Come join us at the Community Center of Mendocino* on Sunday November 15th from 3:00-4:30PM to explore and learn how we can do well personally while doing good for our local and global communities.
We live in precarious and disturbing financial times. The disconnect between what Main Street businesses need and what Wall Street actually does, the Federal Reserve’s continued unsustainable money printing efforts, astronomical levels of federal government debt that can never be repaid, our federal government’s addiction to starting and waging wars with our children’s money, and the continuing environmental degradation and depletion of our natural resources, all make our future seem markedly more precarious than it was in recent decades gone past.  

These recent events provoke the question “For whom is the financial system working?” In this event, we will discuss how you can have the financial system work for you and our communities.  In general, when we think of investing, we think of Wall Street, stocks, bonds, etc. But we urgently need to expand our horizons to consider not just money, but also our time, attention, and energy. Are all of these resources being directed toward our desired future dreams? And what would it mean to diversify in the context of such an expanded viewpoint? This event will cover what is increasingly termed “impact investing,” where investors consciously choose how their money is affecting the world. Three major domains of impact investing will be covered: (1) local business, and local investing, (2) using Wall Street and large financial institutions in sustainable and responsible, regenerative ways and (3) how we can shape a future that will be better than the past, redesigning social and technological systems.

Four Speakers:

Barbara Fishelson, DVM, MBA, is a financial advisor and a local veterinarian who will discuss how we can expand our view of what it means to invest. She will cover how impact investing in Wall St. can be used to support companies that are ‘giving back’ as part of their business model. She will additionally cover how to discover what your money is being used for when you invest in a project or organization.

Andy Schexnaydre, is a financial advisor with more than 20 years in experience based in Sonoma County. He is a frequent guest on the Truth About Money KXYZ radio show, and has been a leading proponent of local investing projects in Northern California. He will take us on a tour of the financial landscape from Wall St to Main St.

Charles Cresson Wood, MBA, MSE, is a law school student and local organizer for Mendocino Coast Transition Towns. He will discuss evolutionary investing -- a forward-looking approach to investing. He will also discuss diversification of assets in order to create community resilience, new personal networks, and sustainable local support systems that will prepare us for a healthier and ecologically-supportive future. 

John Kuhry, MS, is the Executive Director of the Economic Development & Financing Corp., a non-profit community development financial institution focused on local investing in Mendocino County. The organization operates a small business revolving loan fund. Prior to that John was the general manager of Anderson Valley Brewing Company, and business development manager for Real Green Power Company. He will speak about local and sustainable projects and how to arrange financing for those projects.

Contact Barbara Fishelson for more information about the event. She can be reached at 707-937-2834 or bfishelson at fwg.com.

* 998 School St., Mendocino, CA 95460; phone 707-937-4133

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Why is it now so important to actively engage in the reshaping of our financial system?

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“We all understand, in one way or another, that our current economic system, and the finance-dominated ideology that drives it, is unsustainable. Our economic system, predicated on exponential growth, which requires exponential use of materials, does not work on a planet with finite resources.”  -- John Fullerton, founder of the Capital Institute

The propaganda of capitalism and unfettered free markets has blinded many of us to other ways of seeing the world. Over a century ago, Oscar Wilde stated “Nowadays we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Wall St. is characterized by an exchange driven by profits, not by needs. The incentive systems built into our financial system, for example an accounting system that looks only at internal costs, desperately need to be revised. Unless we change the way the system works, there can only be a serious crash.

Does the $4.50 cost of a MacDonald hamburger really cover the cost of its creation? What if we include the costs such as emissions of pollutants like CO2? Water use? Soil degradation? Water pollution from pesticide run-off? Hidden health costs of diet related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease? With a full cost accounting, the true cost of a hamburger is much higher.

The MacDonalds Corporation does not pay these additional costs, the larger society does. This transfer of costs involves what the economists call an “externality.” Many of the true costs are shifted to other parties. According to a report by the Centre for Science and the Environment in India, a burger grown from beef raised on clear-cut forest should really cost about $200. That’s right, $200.

One thing is clear. The thinking that got us into this mess is unlikely to rescue us. Consider that we are all investors. We all invest our time, our money, and our energy daily. Investing at its finest creates connection, exchange, a flow of resources and mutual benefit. However, lately these benefits of investing have become overshadowed by the ever more insidious use of resources in our market society and the “whims of mankind” -those with the financial power and knowhow.

The tools of Wall St have become more and more specialized. Such that the tools have taken on a life of their own. Now we have funds of funds, securitizations of securitizations, and entire firms whose businesses are based on harvesting the advantage of microseconds of trading speed. See The Nature of Investing by Katherine Collins. We need to bring all of this back to what local people really need, not what the top 1% needs.

Financial Sector Costs Us More than Any Other Sector In Economy

The purpose of the financial services industry is basically to transfer money from savers to entrepreneurs. It primarily consists of using a computer to shift money from one bank account to another. This service requires virtually no physical labor and very few material resources. Yet, this relatively simple service cost our country more than $2 trillion in 2007. That was more than the country spent on health care, construction, food, utilities or transportation.

The financial sector is at a historic high as share of the overall economy and this state of affairs reveals how seriously out of balance things are now.
 
http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/financial-sector-takes-largest-share-of-gdp/

How can we change the direction of investing to one that is resilient, sustainable and meets the needs of all? Come join us to find out.