For more info please check out the Global Zero Road Tour here:  http://www.globalzero.org/roadtour

Remember the Old Boys’ Club…? The boring, cranky, devious one that controls the banks, the economy and most of our wealth creation and money supply from behind the scenes? The one where nearly every key position in government is occupied by an Old Boy? Yes, that one.

Well, there are still a few lifetime members of the OBC firmly entrenched in the Federal Reserve (Grandpa Ben), and the Treasury (Timmy G and Larrykins) who continue to give all our money away to their ever-popular clubby friends.

These are the same old boy club members who along with ex-Goldman partner and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin gave the store away to the big banks in 1999 with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Ordinary banks like Citigroup could now legally play roulette with government guaranteed deposits. OB Robert Rubin thought it was such a great idea he took a job with Citibank only weeks after leaving the Treasury.

These same old boys, Summers, Greenspan, Geithner with OB Senator Phil Gramm (now a lobbyist for Swiss Bank UBS) the very next year pushed through the ill-fated Commodities Futures Modernization Act – otherwise known as Derivatives-Are-Born-Free Act. This little understood law overturned a century old rule that had prevented unregulated market bets since the Panic of 1907. Now all bets were off…

Meanwhile back at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that was supposed to be supervising the gladiator games, another group of old boys put the final nail in the coffin. In early 2004, Chairman of the SEC William Donaldson (former head of securities giant DLJ) got together with a few good friends, card-carrying OBC members and business colleagues, the heads of the five largest investment banks in the industry including soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Together the six overturned a law that stood on the books for three decades limiting the amount of risky assets the nation’s largest securities firms could hold.  In a 45 minute meeting, the barrier between 12 to 1 capital to debt ratios and all hell breaking loose was removed.

Unlimited leverage became official:  the biggest banks no longer had to follow “the net capital rule” and could use their “own judgment” for how much risk to take with other people’s money. Within four short years, the five firms would triple and quadruple their risk levels to the point where three of the five firms collapsed along with the United States banking system.

Who benefited from merging boring deposit-taking banking and casino trading by dismantling Glass-Steagall? Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo…

Who benefited from under-the-radar derivative anarchy?
AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS, big banks, the hedge fund and private equity community…

Who benefited from reversing the capital restrictions on  risk for big banks?
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo…

I think you know how the roller-coaster fun ride ended.

It is clear who did NOT benefit from the free-for-all deregulation of banks and the refusal to create a derivatives exchange…The working public, small business, you and me. In fact it was the elimination of these three important legal statutes that pushed the American financial system to the brink of collapse in less than a decade. Are you getting the picture? In the words of Oliver Hardy, Old Boys’ Club of America: Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.

And now for something completely different. The All New Girls’ Club.
Move over boys. The girls are back in town.

Democracy and Law

The recent nominee for Supreme Court Elena Kagan summed up the need for law in the preservation of freedom. “Law matters because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy,” she said. These words could be easily translated to the current debate on financial reform.  Freedom only functions when the laws protect everyone. Keeping our nation’s financial system safe from rape, plunder, and pillage is the ultimate goal for financial reform.

Out of Washington this past decade, little of our government’s actions made rational sense. Economic anarchy was called “free-enterprise” and “reform” was equated with more war and less public safety. Same old story as the old boys kept their stranglehold on the gov and our economy.

Back in the old days (late 20th century America) one voice of reason rang out-the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born. In 1998, Born singlehandedly stood up to the firmly entrenched old boy network of Greenspan, Summers, Rubin, Geithner and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt and fought hard to regulate lethal derivatives citing the risk of unmitigated disaster. Unfortunately, the irrational voices of the old boys drowned her out and her warnings of financial crisis came true.

Sitting on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission a few weeks ago, Born had her chance to chastise the champion of free-for-all enterprise and economic recklessness, Alan Greenspan. She told the old boy that he “failed to prevent the housing bubble, failed to prevent the predatory lending scandal, failed to prevent the activities that would bring the financial system to the verge of collapse…You failed to prevent many of our banks from consolidating and growing to a size that are now too big or too interconnected to fail.”

Wow! What a woman. It was almost worth the  painful two years of financial woe to see Greenspan become visibly angry and categorically deny what is already documented fact. Ding dong “the Oracle” is dead.

In a sea of male bankers, another woman’s wise words stand-out. Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the FDIC and long an advocate of safe banking and distressed homeowner assistance, has the odd distinction of being one of the few banking industry regulators in favor of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Such an agency “would help community banks, not hurt them,” she claimed in direct opposition to her old boy colleagues. In accepting the Profile in Courage Award alongside Brooksley Born, Bair said, “I’m particularly pleased to be joining …other female awardees who stood up when some of their male counterparts failed to act, or worse, actively fought them.”

Next up in the House of Feminine Wisdom is consumer rights champion Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law Professor and Chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel. As head of the panel, Warren is a fierce critic of how the bailout money was allocated by the Fed without condition. She has become the nation’s most vocal and toughest advocate for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Warren summed up her fight for reform with this, “It’s ultimately about protecting the whole economy. When we destabilize American families; when we sell them terrible products that explode in their faces. That in turn destabilizes the entire economy. These products that were gonna offer these huge, huge profits weren’t just lousy deals for consumers. They were lousy deals for investors. They were lousy deals for pension funds. They were lousy deals for the worldwide economy.”

Wall Street: Fix this Mess You Made

Two weeks ago as I stood outside New York’s City Hall listening to angry protestors chant, “Wall Street fix this mess you made.” I realized that only our lawmakers can fix the mess they made.  A financial system without laws protecting the innocent constitutes economic anarchy… And anarchy is a dangerous thing. It has been an expensive and painful lesson for us as a nation and global community. What does the “free market” really mean? What keeps a  society truly free from tyranny after all? Laws can create tyranny or protect us from it – the choice is ours.

The only way to safeguard our economic system for consumers, financial professionals, investors, as well as for bankers is to vigorously regulate the markets. Limiting leverage with capital and debt restrictions, reining in risk of deposit-taking banking institutions (separation of Bank and State), removing conflict of interest from official regulating and rating agencies (eliminate regulator – ratings shopping), and creating a consumer financial protection agency in the same way we oversee every other product on the market from food (FDA) to children’s toys. These changes are basic and reasonable responses to maintain economic freedom, not obscure it.

The Old Boys’ Club has launched a battery of lobbyists who are fighting hard against these reforms and the women in power are pushing back.

Ladies Night

At a recent evening celebrating women leaders, California veteran Senator Diane Feinstein claimed that, “If Congress were all women, we would have financial reform by now.” That may or may not be true. Yet there is something to be said for the healing quality of women. The women in government right now seem intent on fixing the problem, not denying it exists or throwing more wood on the fire.

Feinstein pointed out that 18 years ago when she was first elected to the Senate, there were only two females in that body of Congress. Now there are 17 female U.S. Senators. That is an increase of representation from 4% to 34% in a decade and half. Every election we move closer to shattering the glass ceiling held firmly in place by the OBC that has dominated our nation’s financial system for over two centuries.

Feinstein, Olympia Snowe (R-Me), Susan Collins (R-Me), Barbara Boxer (D-Ca), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kay Hagen (D-NC), and Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) are all leaders on comprehensive financial reform. Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce took the opposite view on financial reform from her male counterparts at the big business lobby thinly disguised as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The USCC is campaigning against the creation of a consumer financial protection agency. Dorfman declared her support for the agency and for “America’s small businesses and communities” by urging Congress to “pass comprehensive financial reform.”

Additionally, Mary Shapiro as head of the new and improved SEC, Bair, Born, and Warren -embody a newly established feminine wisdom that is moving the ineffectual and outdated Old Boys’ Club out of the way.

Women are healers by nature. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, problem solvers, and leaders. The time has come for the feminization of our politics and our economy. Our nation needs to be healed. That’s not a job for the timid or delicate. It’s not for sissies. It is for the strong, powerful, and wise. The way women really are.

The logic of the Old Boys’ Club represented by the ancient Greenspan and the not-so-ancient 50 year old males controlling the nation’s largest financial institutions has rapidly dissipated by its own self-defeating actions.

As for me, I think the patriarchs in the tired dreary old boys’ network had their shot and screwed things up just fine – now it is time for the ladies to take their turn and see if they can clean up the mess the boys made. For my money, I put my trust and faith in the New Girls’ Club.

We have come a long way, haven’t we?

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

The Nepal Blog, submitted by our new blog contributor Ethan Steinberg, an 18 year old student at Miami University (Ohio),  is an enlightening array of  lessons and discoveries from a trip he took to Nepal this summer.

But…before you indulge into his wisdom…a few words from Ethan about who he is and why being a part of PlanetChange2012 is important to him:

As an activist and global citizen I believe that Planet Change has hit on something very important: positive change and active dialogue, and I am also eager to make positive change a functioning reality.  As a blogger, I find that we can better understand each other through discourse, the essence on which this blog is based.  Through discussion the world becomes a better place as we choose to search for peace through understanding.  I work to get all the details and as many perspectives as possible when approaching a situation, which I feel is reflected in my writing.  The Nepal blog entries were written to act as an update for my family and friends as I traveled.  The implications of my trip and its lessons have become a helping hand for many and I hope they continue to inspire.  Moreover, I want my writing to inspire as well.

To read the full nepal blog entry pleae click here:  Nepal blog entry

Really what difference does it make why? The real questions are, is it the right thing and will it diminish public criticism? After all, according to one CEO, these firms are doing “God’s Work.”

Employees at the big bailout firms stand to make even bigger gains for last year’s debacle than previously imagined. With the help of friends in high places, the “too-big-to-fail” banks have roared back to the top of the charts and execs expect to be paid for it. Bonuses are to be announced in late January and early February and are guaranteed to stir up ire among the long-suffering public. Some of Goldman’s efforts to soothe public resentments have included earmarking $500m for “small business education in community colleges” and $61m more to build urban affordable housing. Global investment banks are considering making employee tithing an official part of their business model.

Wall Street firms, including the greed-is-good 1980s Solomon Brothers, have long given back to the community. Junk Bond King Michael Milken has been one of the financial industries largest philanthropists since his release from prison in 1993. George Soros who “broke the Bank of England” has been an unceasing benefactor for many of the world’s neediest for decades.

Financial firms have built schools, underwritten libraries, created poverty programs, fought deadly diseases, and supported environmental sustainability and social entrepreneurship – all in an effort to balance the scales of prosperity.

Three of the biggest contributors to the fallen firefighters’ widows and children funds after the September 11 attacks were Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs. All the big Street firms gave hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the city and honor its fallen heroes. No one in New York ever forgot that.

So what is different now? Isn’t this what capitalism is all about? Making a profit and circulating it back to the people? Of course. Yet any firm that used bailout funds to get back on its feet is no longer viewed as a pure capitalistic venture. With the official label of “too-big-to-fail,” the public sees these firms as government-backed. Therefore the old rules of capitalism no longer apply. Giving a portion of profits to personal charities does little for those losing their homes or the millions of middle-class jobless who took the fall for others.

Since the days of Andrew Carnegie, people have confused good business with philanthropy. The titans of yesteryear, like Carnegie and Rockefeller, established the big business standard of supporting the arts and other non-profits. These men forced people to work at subsistence level wages in subhuman conditions, and then built libraries and schools for the same folks. In the 19^th century selective philanthropy balanced the scales, in the 21^st century it does not.

Business has an obligation to give back to the community that supports it. Therefore, charitable giving is a basic reality for any profitable company. However, in the past year it has become unmistakably clear that business also has an obligation not to profit by exploiting that community.

A great example of this model is the former investment bank Bear Stearns. The Bear was one of the most reckless subprime mortgage securities houses leading to the financial crisis. In the 2000’s, Bear Stearns also set the trend for “giving” by requiring top executives to contribute 4% of their income to charity. Levered at over 40 to one, Bear’s flimsy underwriting standards and outsized trading risk brought the behemoth firm down. Following in its footsteps were Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, both high flying mortgage market makers and generous patrons. The loss of Lehman and Bear to the greater New York not-for-profit community has been heart-breaking.

Yet charitable giving by these firms has not made up for the financial devastation left behind in their wake. Donating 4% to a favorite charity while crushing the working and middle classes has not satisfied stressed taxpayers. The same people who lost their incomes and perhaps their homes directly due to market mayhem are asked to accept charitable donations to quell their rage. Hardly a reasonable offering.

While firms cannot earmark 10% of profits for philanthropy without enraging shareholders, they can invoke the “charity clause.” Setting aside 5-10% of earnings for top producers to support a special community fund might establish better relations with the public after all – if that fund is funneled into a program that supports those affected directly.

For example, Goldman has set aside $16bn in a 2009 bonus pool. What if $1.6bn of this executive fund was used to finance small business loans at zero percent, refinance at-risk homeowners, pay a portion of monthly mortgage payments for unemployed homeowners, or seed money to social entrepreneurship start-ups who guarantee they will hire U.S. workers? These may be highly unusual solutions for profit-seeking Wall Street, but these extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

This week, the top banking chiefs expressed mia culpa for the industry’s part in the economic crisis. Apologies are due, but actions are imperative. Earmarking a portion of bonus checks to plaster your name above the public library door isn’t going to relieve suffering or reduce anger. Real and effective solutions to current economic dilemmas are expected from both the government and financial industry.

To calm the ire of the seething public, firms do need to acknowledge their part in the nation’s misery, but not by following the path of Gilded Age robber barons. The way to rectify ongoing economic fallout is not through subjective “charitable giving,” but through genuine proactive restitution and reform.

About the Author:

Monika Mitchell is the Executive Director and Editor-in-chief of Good Business International, Inc. (GoodB). She founded GoodB in response to the growing need to unify and support the global good business community.

Something miraculous happened on the way to the White House this holiday week. Sixty privileged and pampered U.S. senators dragged themselves out on Christmas Eve in the wee hours of the morning to push through historic health care reform.

Many Americans are against the reforms in the current health care bill either because they hold too much or too little change. Yet the miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue is so much more than the bill itself; the debate on healthcare reform represents a shift of consciousness from exclusive self-interest to inclusive world-interest.

Healthcare is an economic issue as we know in America. It costs too much for too little. The only people who benefit from the high costs of care are pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, those who pad the bills to Medicaid and Medicare, and their investors. Everyone else is out on a limb to pay for the outrageously expensive cost of maintaining our bodies.

The healthcare debate has revealed a clear dividing line in the consciousness of the public. The debate cuts across economic classes, genders, ethnicity, and social stratas. We are no longer separated in a battle between haves, have nots or have mores. The debate reveals a clarion call raging through society: The ancient struggle of self-service versus common-good.

Given the painful lessons of the last year, the mood of the nation seems to be shifting from a “what’s in it for me” cultural ethic to a newly emerging ethos of “If I flourish, so should you.” Battle lines are drawn between those afraid to lose what they have and those willing to share their fortune with others. A new day is dawning in America, because compassion for others has won a decisive victory—at least for the moment.

We are good people in this country; kind people, generous perhaps even to a “fault.” Yet fear of suffering can make even the gentlest of souls selfish and indifferent. A newly minted senior citizen, a woman of 65, is adamantly against health care reform. She states her objection to expanding care, “I don’t want a 45 year old to get my MRI.” The sentiment sounds petty and insensitive coming from someone receiving taxpayer supported Medicare. Yet her concerns are real. Would she get the required care needed or would she have to sacrifice her own health for another’s?

Some don’t want to see their already costly healthcare premiums increase. Others don’t want to pay tax on top level care. Still others fear their healthcare will be compromised in service to others. All these are real concerns for ordinary Americans. Some working, some not—all are understandably worried whether their survival and comfort will be threatened by “reform.”

Yet an extraordinary change of heart is underfoot, worthy of the era we find ourselves in: the era of shared concern.

The issues of universal healthcare go far beyond any legislation debated in Congress. The fundamental issue revolves around, “What is our obligation as human beings to care for others?” “Must I sacrifice any part of my comfort or share my good fortune with you?”

The big banks have answered this question this year by plowing ahead with bonuses at the expense of the American taxpayer. If we really believe in “raw survival-of-the-fittest capitalism” we should be okay with this. Yet most of us are adamantly opposed to this inequity.

The Fed Chief states the bailout he himself engineered is “distasteful and unfair;” yet only those who benefited from his actions agree. Anyone struggling financially to survive knows how misguided and undemocratic the 2008-2009 bailout programs truly are.

We have been in an on-going struggle in America since our founding between individualism, our personal sense of freedom, and a broader sense of justice and fair play. “What is our obligation to the greater public and at what cost does that come to ourselves?” is the key question consistently argued in our two century history.

I don’t know the answer for everyone, but for me the answer can be best told through a story. Several years ago I visited an American friend in Brazil. As we sat at an outdoor churrascaria gazing at the crowded sands of Ipanema, content in all our abundant perfection, a little boy of nine or ten peered at me through the restaurant gates. His huge brown eyes hungrily took in the bounty before me. As the waiters brought more food, I said to my friend, “Can we ask him to join us?” My friend seemed annoyed by the question and explained that Rio was not like the U.S. “Orphaned street children are common here,” he said. “You can give them a few coins, but not more than that because if you do you will never get rid of them.”

The callousness of his remark shocked me. I asked, “But we have so much food, can’t we give him some? He looks like he is starving.” My friend shook his head no, made a joke about life’s inequities and detailed the Brazilian social system to me. “People are just used to it here, you can’t help them. This is just the way it is.” My friend and I began a deep discussion on indifference, civic duty, and compassion. All the time the little boy’s eyes stared at the table of food through the gate. The discussion became heated as we both stated our increasingly diverse views. As my friend kept eating and talking, the limitless supply of meats flowing, my appetite and conversation diminished. “How can you eat while this child is starving?” I asked him. He laughed and stuffed a rare piece of Filet Mignon in his mouth and said, “Like this.”

When he got up to go to the restroom I signaled to the child to come and sit down. The boy ran through the gates to the table, only to be intercepted by angry waiters who shooed him away like a fly. The head waiter scolded me harshly for inviting “street urchins” into his restaurant. My friend returned to the chaotic scene embarrassed by my social faux pas and I decided to leave, but not before asking for a “doggie bag.” The waiter refused and I scooped up the meats untouched on my plate into a napkin, handed them to the boy who grabbed them and ran off.

My companion was as repulsed by my actions as I was by his. In my youth I judged him harshly. I left to go back to the States and rarely spoke to him again. In time, I recognized the real issue between us was not as cut and dry as one might suppose- it was the differing ways we viewed the world. I felt an obligation to help those less fortunate in any way I could; he felt he had no obligation to the “world,” only to a select few. His seeming self-interest belied the fact that he was deeply generous to a handful of friends in New York and Brazil. Yet his kindness did not spill over to the greater human population. “I cannot help everyone,” he told me, “and neither can you.”

In the years since, I understand his behavior more than I once did. He was a kind man who could not express that compassion to the greater community without overwhelming himself. That “is just the way it is,” he had told me. His statement marked an apathy and acceptance I did not share. That was the major difference between us more than any innate goodness on my part or his.

He was right of course in his mature wisdom. I cannot help everyone, nor can anyone. But we can do whatever possible to help others without sacrificing ourselves. I told my friend in Rio that it might be the way it is, “but I don’t accept it.” Neither should any of us, accept a status quo of indifference and apathy, not if we hope to create a better world.

While the healthcare bill is as imperfect as we humans are, it marks an important shift from apathy and indifference to shared responsibility. Healthcare in this country is an expensive commodity reserved only for those who are fortunate enough to afford it or old enough to qualify for it.

That might be the way it is, but we don’t have to accept it, because it is just not good enough.

The new vote on Healthcare brings Hope for a less indifferent and more responsible America in the year ahead—one where the basic necessities of life are not considered luxuries meant only for a lucky few.

Read more

The Lessons of Copenhagen

by Ervin Laszlo

President Obama called the agreement hammered out on the last day of the Copenhagen summit “meaningful.”  It is indeed a meaningful agreement—both for what it achieved, and for what it failed to achieve.

It saved the summit from becoming a total fiasco: the U.N. and its member states could report that agreement had been reached for coping with the threat of climate change—at least among the major industrialized nations.  Reaching an agreement was the goal of the summit, and this has been achieved.  It can be followed up—ratified, and elaborated, in subsequent steps.  The agreement is meaningful for the reason of its very existence.

However, the agreement is also meaningful (in the literal sense of “full of meaning”), for what it failed to achieve.  It didn’t find consensus among the world’s governments, with a sizable portion of developing countries voicing strong opposition.  It didn’t set quantitative targets for carbon emission reductions.  It only set a two degree Celsius average warming as the limit, whereas most countries threatened by global warming wanted a 1.5 degree limit.  And it isn’t a legally binding agreement.  Not surprisingly, the head of the European Union admitted deep disappointment; the Chinese delegation welcomed it mainly because it maintained the sovereignty of the participating countries; developing country delegates said that they had been offered 30 pieces of silver to betray their people and their future and spoke of a suicide pact created in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. Some NGOs spoke of abject failure, and of justice not having been done, because the rich countries have condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life.

Nonetheless, the agreement is meaningful also because of what it failed to achieve.  Its failure holds an important lesson.  We must not have unrealistic expectations; we must not keep barking up the wrong tree.  Just what is it that we can rightfully expect of a United Nations conference on global problems such as climate change?

The U.N. is an organization of the nation-states of the world.  Nation-states are sovereign entities that only join together in their own interest.  Cooperation in specific domains and on particular issues is in their interest as long as it maintains or enhances their paramount objective, which is to preserve and enhance their own wealth and power.

But what if the system of cooperation among nation-states is not capable of coping with global problems, such as climate change?  Many social scientists, humanists, and the majority of international NGOs know that the current system is poorly adapted to confront global issues.  Systems scientists have long said that a system consisting of many—in this case nearly two hundred—highly diverse actors, where each actor is primarily concerned to optimize its own wealth and power, cannot ensure the coherent functioning of the system in which they participate: the more powerful among them “suboptimizes” its functioning.  The imbalances ultimately impair the viability of the system, and hence endanger also its constituent members.

Under these circumstances can we rightfully expect of a U.N. conference that it would produce anything more than trade-offs among the perceived interests of the member states?

Copenhagen produced evidence that expecting anything more than this is not realistic. Yet the U.N. climate conference was not a failure.  Its achievement was not the last-minute agreement that saved it from collapse, but the furthering of the process by which that agreement was reached.  Thanks to the initiative of the United Nations, not only the representatives of the world’s nation-states, but also the representatives of a sizable portion of the world’s peoples had come together to discuss issues that are of concern to everyone.  They held parallel sessions, Peoples’ Summits such as the “Klimaforum,” and the level of motivation and resolve at these meetings was entirely remarkable.

It is thanks to the prima facie failure of Copenhagen that more and more people are questioning whether effective global-level action is feasible in the framework of the present international system. It is thanks to Copenhagen that the world community has received fresh motivation to take matters into its hands. And it is thanks to Copenhagen that the world is now confronted with the urgent question, how the current system could be transformed to produce not just “meaningful agreements” but binding resolves and effective action.  The question who could bring about such a transformation has gained importance and urgency.

The answer to the last question has become fairly evident.  Those who could create a system capable of coping with global problems are not the political leaders of the current system, for they are captives of the system that brought them to power.  A political leader, even if he is as change-oriented as Barack Obama, cannot take action that is contrary to the paramount objective of maintaining and enhancing the economic and political power of his nation. This is the case even if he is convinced that it is in the best interest of his nation to create a system in which sovereignty in regard to global problems is vested in the community of all states, rather than in each state individually.  Such action would not be politically “realistic” and could even be suicidal.  This does not hinge on the will and personality of the leader; it is a problem of operating within the current system.

But if not political leaders, then who could transform the established international system?  Unless there is a sudden shift in the thinking of global business managers, the answer can only be: the concerned and committed people of the world.  Margaret Mead told us never to doubt the power of a group of committed people to change the world—she added, nobody else ever has. But how long before a critical mass of concerned and committed people would come together to implement the necessary transformation? Copenhagen has shown that the segment of concerned and committed people is growing in the world, but it has also shown that it has not yet grown sufficiently to produce effective action beyond controversial agreements.

What would it take to generate a critical mass of concerned and committed people?  Very likely, it would take more than data produced by scientists and rhetoric by NGOs, and periodic reports by the media.  It would take something that affects people’s lives in a clear and dramatic fashion—something that they experience on their own skin.  It would take additional crises.

This conclusion appears pessimistic, for it questions whether the transformation we need to cope with global problems can come about by insight and foresight, rather than traumatic experience.  But it is also optimistic, because it maintains that crises can catalyze the critical mass needed to change the world.  It is highly unlikely that in coming years the world would be lacking in crises. Humankind has become one of the biosphere’s endangered species.  People are beginning to feel this already, and will no doubt feel it more when they experience more and deeper crises.

Nobody knows just when the critical level of crisis will come about, but we can be reasonably sure that it will come about.  There is a distinct probability that it will come about in the next few years.  We may not be able to avoid the “appointment with destiny” prophesied by the Mayans and other traditional peoples in regard to the end of 2012.  That period would not bring the end of the word; it would only bring the end of this world.  It would bring global transformation: a “worldshift.”  We need to prepare for such a shift, so that when the time to carry it out arrives, we could act effectively.

A truly foresighted and wise endeavor today is to keep alive and deepen the motivation catalyzed in Copenhagen.  It is to address the people of the world, especially the young people, a message that is loud and clear.

The current international system cannot cope with the global problems that threaten us. We need to create a new system of cooperation, based on shared values and joint interests. The leaders of the established order will not create it; they are not in a position to do so: there is too much inertia and resistance within the system. But you could create it. You are the best, and perhaps the last, hope of humankind.  If you fail, our species will enter on a path that leads to chaos and devolution, and could terminate in extinction.  You cannot allow this to happen. The evolution of a remarkable species on this precious planet cannot come to an untimely end.

You, the people, the young people, of today can be the change you want to see in the world, the change we urgently need.  The world is in crisis, and crisis is both danger and opportunity.  You must wake up to the danger, and seize the opportunity. You must begin to change yourself so you could join together—and then change the world.

Ervin Laszlo is founder and president of The Club of Budapest and co-founder of the WorldShift Alliance and the WorldShift 2012 Campaign.  His latest book is WorldShift 2012: Making Green Business, New Politics and Higher Consciousness Work Together (2009).

Laszlo op-ed

Respected journals and periodicals report that “nothing” has changed over the past year on Wall Street since the financial collapse. Some make the staggering claim that it is back to “business as usual.” In other words, surprise of surprise (?), greed still exists—particularly in the world of money.

Yes, greed does exist and will continue to until a transformation of consciousness takes hold of all of us. In fact in the last year of our “Lord”—the Money God that is—a lot has changed.

Firstly, there is a growing recognition of the part that unbridled greed played in the destruction of venerable old firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns within the financial industry itself. AIG and Merrill Lynch exist in some form or other, but limp along as lifeless shadows of their former greatness.

Contrary to popular belief, most people on the Street, from top levels of high finance through the middle and bottom layers too, know that their coworkers are responsible in large part for the capitulation of a once celebrated –now vilified—free market business model. Too little, too late, they lament. We should have seen it coming.

Along with this private acknowledgement is the conviction that it won’t happen again—not on their watch anyway.

Perhaps ironically, much of the Street feels similarly to the public in one major area: the government did not do its job to oversee and regulate the safety and protections of the marketplace.  This is undisputedly true.

In 2002, after the World Com and Enron debacles, Free Market Architect Alan Greenspan accurately stated that ”an infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community.” He was referring, of course, to the copycat “creative accounting” rules for major shareholder companies that subsequently declared bankruptcy, bringing investors down with them.

In that same speech, the Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve stated, ‘It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.” In this is the key to our current economic dilemma. Alan Greenspan’s recognition of the dangers of outsized greed did not compel him to petition for change—nor did it for the rest of us. Public officials and citizens turned the other way—they know what they are doing, we thought. They know better than we, was our flawed conclusion.  

As modern societies of the 21^st century, greed should no longer shock us—nor should it numb us. Like war, murder, rape, and any of sort of human action that infringes on the individual and collective rights of society, the reality of greed and the relentless human desire to find “avenues to express it” requires constant oversight and vigilance.

Greed exists; therefore laws to protect society from it must be created and enforced. It is as simple as that. We protect society from murderers and rapists with a legal framework of punishment. Although these human calamities still exist, we acknowledge the need to inhibit these actions with severe consequences. Protection of society from the destructive forces of greed necessitates similar deterrents.

While Wall Street and its students are nailed to the wall as evil incarnate, torn apart in every print publication, trashed and abused in media events, Congressional discourse, and public forums, are they really the source of our discontent or is it the human failing of greed itself?

We ask Wall Street to make money, move the economy, create wealth and prosperity for all. When they do so, we are happy – if we win. However, if we lose, they are villains, worse – criminals who broke no laws; we turn our backs on the very people and very system we formerly embraced. Because the cultural ethic of greed has been accepted as the Holy Grail for so long, we never questioned it until it turned against us.  Only then did we cry bloody murder.

So who is really responsible for the economic burdens we continue to bear?

You, me, Wall Street, and the government officials who are charged with protecting us from ourselves.

All of us have created the monster that now devours us.

Like the Greek mythological king, Midas, for years everything we touched turned to gold. Like Midas, his good fortune inevitably becomes a curse. Midas touches food and water and turns them to gold, destroying his own sustenance. His beloved daughter turns to gold when he touches her hand. Midas grieves the loss of his daughter and begins to hate the fruits of wealth he so desired. The old king did not realize the high price he would pay for his greed.

Neither did we in America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, France, China, India, Japan, and any other partner of the raw and unrestrained capitalism that had no brakes, no limits, no protections. 

We have been betrayed by our own worship of money and wealth—by our own Greed.

The Money God, as Midas discovered, is shallow comfort in the light of real human need. We need love, family, friends, home, health, productive work, and financial security—all the things that are now threatened by our voracious appetite for more.

So despite those who gloomily despair that nothing has changed—much has changed. Our dependence on financial speculation for security for one. Our reverence for wealth as the epitome of success and accomplishment for another. Our innocence about the super human powers of money creation we endowed our former money gods with; now in the wake of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, we know better. They are no more money gods than we; their feet are made of clay just as ours are too.

Like Midas, those in government (Congress, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and others in public office before this year) that contributed directly to this colossal mess have to hide their donkey ears. Yet there is no one to blame if we are all not to blame. The society of greed we encouraged and embraced is the real source of our suffering.

We are forever changed by the events of the past two years. Regulation is surely to come down the pike in heavy doses. Personal and individual freedoms will be diminished to protect the freedom of the whole. Inevitably, officials and money men will be weeded out and more cautious men and women will replace them. They are armed with the knowledge of their predecessor’s experience.

Those that came before will be unfortunate casualties in the evolution of consciousness that is taking hold of the world of money—a world that by our very existence, we are all a part.

An evolving consciousness is seeding within the modern mind that understands, after these last challenging years, that greed does indeed know no bounds. And the primitive belief in self-interest at any cost that dovetails with it, even to the destruction of the very society that supports it, also finds itself a wounded relic of an ancient past.

As we embark on the dawn of the second decade in the new millennium, the consciousness of greed and its high and painful cost colors all that we do going forward.

From this century on, a profound and necessary change has come to capitalist America—one that accompanies the knowledge that not all things that turn to gold are desired.

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New York State of Mind

A new law on the books since last year in New York helps protect subprime mortgage holders from foreclosure. A similar bill protecting prime borrowers recently was passed by the State Legislature. The bill requires lenders to give 90 days’ warning and forces lenders into settlement conferences with borrowers before proceeding with foreclosure.

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Love Thy Neighbor

The “City of Brotherly Love” lives up to its name these days with a foreclosure prevention program that is inspiring other struggling communities to follow. Not one to wait for Washington to come through, the city made famous by America’s revolutionary founders has created a program for distressed homeowners like no other.

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Upping the Ante

The Treasury Department ordered Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and big and small lenders to Washington D.C. this week to inject a little gratitude into their blood money veins. Of the 71 participating lenders, few have accomplished significant mortgage modifications for troubled homeowners. To insure a patriotic zeal from “take the money and run” lenders, the Treasury is installing “three person SWAT teams to monitor the eight largest companies’ work and requesting twice-daily reports on their progress.”

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Europe Saves the Planet

You know all those extra cell phone chargers that you don’t know what to do with? Now these useless gadgets can go to the great charger resting place in the sky aka: the dump. Unfortunately, they are not recyclable or biodegradable. Not to mention how costly they become every time we “upgrade” our phones. A waste of money, waste of plastic, and just plain waste!

Well, the environmentally savvy European Union has done it again and come to the rescue! Europe saves dollars and our planet on the plan for a universal cell phone charger. Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and five other companies struck a deal with the European Union (EU) this year. Read More

The Gold Standard

French-based luxury jeweler Cartier has vowed to buy only “sustainable gold” for their gems. Similar to Fair Trade coffee, Cartier is working with the non-profit PACT to buy gold from smaller miners to improve their economic conditions. Pact’s stated mission is to help poorer nations “build empowered communities.”

Additionally, Cartier has joined ranks with a consortium of civic-minded gem companies, the Responsible Jewellery Council (RSJ), to promote “responsible ethical, human rights, social and environmental practices in a transparent and accountable manner throughout the industry from mine to retail.” Read More

The Holy Grail of Free Markets: Competition

Antitrust laws in Europe and the U.S. are very clear that competition in the marketplace is a fundamental value of modern business. Much of the criticism surrounding global banking and official bailouts has been centered on the interference with free market competition in the wake of government aid.

Competition is held so sacred that Microsoft was aggressively litigated in the U.S. and Europe for anti-trust infringement. The tech company was forced to pay hundreds of millions in penalties to the EU and the U.S. Simon Johnson, former IMF economist and MIT professor, expressed a persuasive view in The “Quiet Coup” that financial institutions, particularly in the U.S., are monopolies.

A one day annual conference, European Competition Day, was held in early October in Stockholm to encourage European countries and the EU to keep market competition open.

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