We invite feedback on the following:
ECONOMY INTEREST GROUP
Discussion Saturday, April 18
Assumptions we brainstormed:
Ø Knowing one facet of trading, the intricacy of the loans is scary because it was gambling
Ø We will do mergers, fire thousands, and extract $$ for management . . . this has failed and must be improved
Ø Federal Reserve will bail out the banks – money supply & inflation
Ø 20’s & 30’s will never have the financial security their parents had
Ø Coming out we will have inflation . . . first deflation
Ø Widening gap between have’s and have-not’s
Ø Unless there is a grassroots movement to influence our leaders for good regulation . . . require campaign finance reform
Ø Because of debt & dysfunctional economic system, we will never have the time of cheap oil again . . . we need graceful descent . . . change our values
Ø People who have power and wealth will not give up . . . fear the reaction, lust for power
Ø Some of the leaders will embrace servant leadership . . . change those companies
Ø We need to have a grassroots movement, but first we need articulate and literate grassroots
Ø We could pass a law of a 15:1 ratio of executive pay for top 1500 firms
Ø Experiments going on throughout nation, learn about other economic systems
Ø We can’t go back to rural system
Ø “Transition towns,” local living economies, community-building, is an example of an alternative
If we developed a plan for fair, just, and moral economic system, the plan would include the following:
- De-leverage the corporation (separate chairman & CEO, grow by efficiency, service and manufacturing – not acquisition)
- Process to compute triple bottom line (people, planet, profit)
- Where everyone has basic needs met (housing, universal health care, safety, education)
- Training program for literacy (ecology, economy, entrepreneur)
- Groups to support (envisioning, problem-solving) – use Internet
- MASSIVE increase in transparency in regulation – change accounting rules
- Sense of personal responsibility (a citizen, not a consumer)
- More employee-owned entities
- Micro-enterprise opportunities
- Empower, recognize and support new entrepreneurs
- Give priority to sustainability
- Revise taxes to make more simple and progressive
- Ensure that we do not treat the Wall Street as the other
- Whatever we create, we must take into account the world
- Revise our assistance – World Bank & IMF – to empower the developing world
- Re-think NAFTA because it only benefits the U.S.
- Challenge (cut the link) of unlimited growth (sustainable living)
- Business will be accountable to local communities
- Return to local financial institutions (break up large banks)
- Recognition that diversity is necessary and good
