Hazel Henderson, and the Transfinancial Economics Connection

Hazel Henderson,


From: robert searle <dharao4@yahoo.co.uk>
To: discussion@globaljusticemovement.net
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 12:56
Subject: [GJM] Release of Brief Hazel Henderson Post.

--- On Sat, 24/1/09, M Alan Kazlev <alankazlev@ihug.com.au> wrote: From: M Alan Kazlev <alankazlev@ihug.com.au> Subject: FW: Transfinancial Economics To: "robert searle" <dharao4@yahoo.co.uk> Date: Saturday, 24 January, 2009, 7:54 AM hi Robert just forwarding this on... all the best alan Thread-Topic: Transfinancial Economics Thread-Index: Acl8n7n8oOg2CZ+wSg68uYcHGw2KkgAABYCg From: "Hazel Henderson" <hhlibry@hazelhenderson.com> To: <alankazlev@ihug.com.au> Hi Robert Searle; I am also a Brit , grew up in Bristol and Clevedon . Now as US citizen grateful for our new president One of my friends, John Theaker , of Green Your Office.co.uk in London sent me your paper on Transfinancial Economics . It is in alignment with much of my own writing ( see the homepage at http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/ and http://www.hazelhenderson.com/ , click on Editorials and The Politics of Money. The current financial mess is a new “ teachable moment “ on the true nature of money ! Warm wishes, Hazel Henderson HAZEL HENDERSON, D.Sc.Hon., FRSA, author, futurist, president - Ethical Markets Media, LLC Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy has won a 2007 Nautilus Award for Conscious Business/Leadership and a 2008 Axiom Award for best business book. Visit www.EthicalMarkets.com, www.EthicalMarkets.tv, www.hazelhenderson.com and www.calvert-henderson.com for the latest information on socially responsible investing, green technologies and global corporate citizenship. Ethical Markets Media, LLC; PO Box 5190, St. Augustine, FL 32085; Phone: 904/829-3140, Fax: 904/826-0325   In later communication which did not appear on a GJM discussion post she wrote to Michel Bauwens, and myself (the blogger).  Michel On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Hazel Henderson <hazel.henderson@ethicalmarkets.com> wrote: Dear Robert Searle and Hi Michel : I have been following Robert’s creative work on Transfinancial Economics with great interest. Michel : thanks for publishing this work and for all you do to keep us abreast of this kind of futures research.. AND, special thanks for your very kind endorsement of our GREEN TRANSITION SCOREBOARD® ! I have just finished an invitational paper, “ LOOKING BACK FROM 2020 “ for one of our upcoming conferences of pioneer asset managers . Also , my “ From Rigged Carbon Markets to Green Investing “ was posted yesterday ( under “ Potemkin Markets “ my original title ) by the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets , of which our company is a member. If you want to distribute it on P2P , this is OK if you mention that it will appear in FORESIGHT ( U.K) forthcoming. Robert : I very much agree with your ethical approach, goals and values and for the intricate modeling on how all this might be implemented in a national level electronic payments and transfers system. I have all the old Technocracy documents on BTU-based currencies and the Venus Project is, near here in Florida and I remember being visited by its founder, Jacque Fresco, some years ago. At that time I was writing The Politics of the Solar Age ( Doubleday, 1981, 1988 ) and working with Louis and Patricia Kelso on ESOPs , Norman Kurland, as well as Mike Linton founder of LETS and Edgar Cahn founder of Time Banking , while teaching at Schumacher College in Devon. I found the Venus Project too technocratic for my taste , but very creative and he has stuck with it ! ........     The following is a Wikipedia entry on Hazel, and could do with some expanding..           From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Hazel Henderson (born March 27, 1933 in Bristol, England) is a futurist and an economic iconoclast. In recent years she has worked in television, and she is the author of several books including Building A Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, Planetary Citizenship (with Daisaku Ikeda), and Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy. Contents  [hide]  1 Career 2 Ontology 3 Books 4 See also 5 External links Career[edit] Henderson is now a television producer for the public television series Ethical Markets. She has been Regent's Lecturer at the University of California (Santa Barbara) and held the Horace Albright Chair in Conservation at the University of California (Berkeley). She has also been a traveling lecturer and panelist. Recently, she has served on the boards of such publications as Futures Research Quarterly, The State of the Future Report, and E/The Environmental Magazine (US), Resurgence, Foresight and Futures (UK). She advised the US Office of Technology Assessment and the National Science Foundation from 1974 to 1980. Listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Science and Technology, and in Who's Who in Business and Finance. Henderson has been in good part concerned with finding the unexplored areas in standard economics and the "blind spots" of conventional economists. Most of her work relates to the creation of an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns. For instance, she has delved into the area of the "value" of such unquantifiables as clean air and clean water, needed in tremendous abundance by humans and other living organisms. This work led to the development, with Calvert Group, of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. In 2005, Henderson started Ethical Markets Media, LLC,[1] to disseminate information on green investing, socially responsible investing, green business, green energy, business ethics news, environmentally friendly technology, good corporate citizenship and sustainable development by making available reports, articles, newsletters and video gathered from around the world. In 2007, Henderson started EthicalMarkets.TV [2] to showcase video of people and organizations around the world with socially responsible endeavors. Practicing what she preaches, Henderson sought out highly efficient technology to stream the video, MIPBSCast which uses significantly less energy than most other video platforms. Ontology[edit] Henderson has been one of the critics to point out that the definitions of reality devised by natural and social scientists often pertain to the realities they are paid to study — raising questions as to who has funded these investigators and theoreticians, and why? Who deems certain research grants to be worthy of funding? Which questions crop up in the first place? Henderson believes that the various threats to peace, community security, and good environment have led us into a new era in which we are obliged to look for values, information, and know-how that we seemed to be able to do without until recent decades. One of her famous aphorism compare the occidental economic model to a cake with three level, with glass on the top: the first level is the nature, the second level is the sussistance economy, the third level is the public and private economy and the last level is the finance. Books[edit] Library resources About Hazel Henderson Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Hazel Henderson Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-933392-23-3 Daisaku Ikeda coauthor, Planetary Citizenship, Middleway Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-9723267-2-8, 256 pgs Hazel Henderson et al., Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, Calvert Group, 2000, ISBN 978-0-9676891-0-4, 392 pgs Beyond Globalization. Kumarian Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1-56549-107-6, 88 pgs Building a Win-Win World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995, ISBN 978-1-57675-027-8, 320 pgs Creating Alternative Futures. Kumarian Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1-56549-060-4, 430 pgs (original edition, Berkley Books, NY, 1978) Hazel Henderson et al., The United Nations: Policy and Financing Alternatives. Global Commission to Fund the United Nations, 1995, ISBN 978-0-9650589-0-2, 269 pgs Paradigms in Progress. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995, ISBN 978-1-881052-74-6, 293 pgs (original edition, Knowledge Systems, 1991) Redefining Wealth and Progress: New Ways to Measure Economic, Social, and Environmental Change : The Caracas Report on Alternative Development Indicators. Knowledge Systems Inc., 1990, ISBN 978-0-942850-24-6, 99 pgs The Politics of the Solar Age. Knowledge Systems Inc., 1988, ISBN 978-0-941705-06-6, 433 pgs (original edition, Doubleday, NY, 1981 See also[edit] Noosphere Solidarity economy Technology assessment External links[edit] HazelHenderson.com EthicalMarkets.com Calvert-Henderson.com EthicalMarkets.tv www.youtube.com – 2007 Interview with Hazel Henderson talking on economics (video, 10min) Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 79338697 LCCN: n88072285 ISNI: 0000 0001 1072 6639 GND: 172133440 Persondata Name Henderson, Hazel Alternative names Short description Date of birth 1933 Place of birth Date of death Place of death Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hazel_Henderson&oldid=576012010" Categories: 1933 births English economists People from Bristol Living people British activists Nautilus Book Award winners

Democratizing Finance

 

Posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 10:37 am by Hazel Henderson

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The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the too big to fail culture of global money-center banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralize and democratize finance.
Meanwhile, at the global level, the G-20 countries demands to democratize the voting structures of the IMF and the World Bank are essential to reflect the changing balance of economic power. The G-7 and G-8 group of countries are no longer relevant now that the G-20 group (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and also the European Union) has taken center stage.
While national safety-nets are unraveling due to budget cuts, local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier homegrown economies:
€ Local barter-clubs, like Freecycle.com, Craigslist and LETS, and scrip currencies are proliferating ­ as they always do when central bankers and the International Monetary Fund fail or apply the wrong remedies and make matters worse. Some of the most successful complementary currencies are Switzerlands WIR and in the USA, BerkShares, with equivalent to $2 million issued in the first two years and accepted by banks and businesses in Massachusetts. Similar complementary currencies are matching needs and resources and clearing local markets in Britain, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and other countries.
€ People-to-people lending and microfinance projects are booming in many countries. Womens World Banking, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, now emulated in many countries, FINCA and ACCION in Latin America, as well as the newer online versions, including Microplace, Kiva, as well as lenders Prosper.com in the USA and Zopa.com in Britain. Credit unions, operated in Europe and North America for a century, are becoming more proactive. They are filling new local needs, reaching out to poorer people and adding microfinance and lending to small businesses.
€ Associations of small local banks and businesses are wielding more political clout, as are credit unions. In the USA, they are demanding equal treatment in the governments TARP, TALF, and other bailout funds currently showered on the big banks whose reckless lending triggered the financial mess. Venture capital and venture philanthropy firms, including the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, Acumen and the foundations of Ebay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll, are investing in social enterprises which meet social needs while making modest profits. Such social capital is now creating a new hybrid sector in many economies.
€ The Business Alliance for Local Living Economics (BALLE) is such a network in North America, as well as the New Voice of Business, Green America, the Social Enterprise Alliance, the Fourth Sector Network and the Business-NGO Working Group. Entrex.net focuses on helping small businesses with their Private Company Index (PCI) which outperforms most stock indexes. Britains New Economics Foundation (NEF) has been generating both local initiatives, such as the Transition Towns movement, as well as its Green New Deal and alternative indicators to correct GDP, measuring wellbeing and ecological sustainability. NEFs proposal to save Britains 11,500 postal offices by adding local banking functions is backed by trade unions, small businesses, public interest groups and pensioners.
€ Time banking, a brainchild of Edgar Cahn in the USA (see www.ethicalmarkets.tv), is now helping local people connect and share services in Japan, Europe and other countries. Neighbors contact each other via a local time banker to provide meals and help for shut-ins, babysit each others children, watch over property, mow lawns and share appliances. Car-sharing has now spawned many new companies such as Zip Car in the USA and others in Canada and Europe where people can make ride arrangements rapidly on Blackberrys and laptops.
€ China is host to many such local initiatives, linking small businesses on networks, including Baidu.com, Alibaba.com, as well as Qifang.com which provides affordable loans to Chinas 25 million students. Circle Pleasure, a private company selling prepaid consumer cards, has formed a joint venture with Qifang for people-to-people banking, the first private company to receive a banking license from Chinas Central Bank. In many countries in Africa, cell phone banking has taken off. Cell phones are the basis for the phone ladies in Indian and Bangladeshi villages, who rent out use of their cell phones to other villages. Rural farmers and fishers can consult prices being offered in nearby towns and markets on their cell phones to make sure they take their goods to the best places to sell them.
How far can people-to-people finance go in bypassing big, greedy banks and ethically challenged Wall Street financiers and their political allies? A long way, thanks to all the communications tools now widely available. Using these new information-sharing tools is helping people realize again what money is: just one form of information. Today it is possible to trade using pure information exchange. For example, in rural areas in Florida, radio stations have call-in programs where farmers can say I have spare time on my tractor to exchange for fertilizer or pepper, melon, eggplant seeds. The farmer gives her phone number and the trades are exchanged off-line. Similarly, the growth of farmers markets and contract-supported agriculture allows local consumers to buy fresh produce directly from nearby farms.
All these local solutions and people-to-people safety-nets raise the question How did we allow big banks and centralized finance to grow so large that they become predators on the real living economies which produce the worlds real wealth? Local people around the world are realizing that they can simply bypass big banks, stock exchanges and create all these services locally. The old, bloated financial sectors must downsize, cut their bonuses and take the losses from their reckless bets in their global casino. A truly efficient financial services sector should be less than 10% of a countrys GDP. Those in Britain and the USA grew to 25% of GDP, metastasizing with their financial engineers preying on the real economy. Now students are looking for jobs as real engineers, teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs.
In a very real sense, we humans dont have a financial crisis but a crisis of perception. We are beginning to see our world differently than mainstream media portrays. We see our choices with new eyes. We know that money is not real wealth. We learn as we watch central bankers printing money on TV. Real wealth is generated by productive people using the Earths resources wisely. Money is a great invention. When it is managed properly, locally, nationally, globally or electronically, it is a useful medium of exchange. Hoarding money is no longer a reliable store of value. We are all rediscovering the many stores of value in our own communities. We find wealth beyond money. We can change our values for the new times we live in and restore the love economies to their central role in our lives.
Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), is president of Ethical Markets Media, an independent social enterprise covering local economies, new currencies and the growing green sectors (www.ethicalmarkets.com). She co-created the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, updated regularly at Calvert-Henderson.com. She lives with her husband in St. Augustine, Florida.




The Blogger Ref Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

Worldwide Support Found for Measuring True Wealth of Nations

Posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 11:51 am by Hazel Henderson

The "Beyond GDP" Conference in the European Parliament, Nov. 19-20^th, released a survey by GLOBESCAN for Ethical Markets Media, LLC, which finds three quarters of people in ten countries agreeing that their governments should look beyond economics and include health, social and environmental statistics in measuring national progress. The survey can be accessed at www.ethicalmarkets.com, www.globescan.com and at the conference website www.beyond-gdp.eu.
Around 1000 respondents in France, Italy, Britain, Germany, Russia, Brazil, India, Canada, Australia and Kenya were asked which of two points of view was closest to their own:

• That governments should measure national progress using money-based statistics because economic growth is the most important focus for their country; or
• That health, social and environmental statistics are as important as economic ones and that governments should also use these for measuring progress.

Support is especially strong in mature industrial societies in the European Union. French and Italians are most enthusiastic with 86% and 85% support respectively. The British agreed with the "Beyond GDP" approach by 80%; Germans by 71%. Three of the so-called BRIC countries showed similar support: Brazilians approved by 69%, Russians by 75% and Indians by 70%. While China was not surveyed, it led the world in 2004 by unveiling China's "Green GDP" which sought to adjust China's economic model to take more account of its environmental and social consequences.
This "Green GDP" was popular with Chinese people suffering from pollution and land grabs by developers. Original "Green GDP" calculations deducted some 3% from China's reported 11% growth of conventional GDP, used by virtually all other countries and financial media. Chinese business leaders and local officials whose performance is still judged by conventional GDP growth objected. These controversies were enough to halt the "Green GDP" experiment. However, with health costs and fears of pollution keeping athletes and visitors away from the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing in 2008, China may have to revive its "Green GDP."
In other countries in the GLOBESCAN survey, Australians agreed with the "Beyond GDP" position by 79%, Canadians by 65% and Kenyans by 71%. Earlier surveys in 1993 by the Americans Talk Issues Foundation found similar super-majorities in favor of broadening GDP to include health, education and other social and environmental indicators.
In spite of pressure from civic groups which first erupted in 1992 at the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, governments have dragged their heels in implementing Agenda 21 which called for correcting their GDP scorecards by including social and environmental indicators. However, the 170 governments which signed on ran into domestic opposition from business and financial groups benefiting from GDP which ignores those social and environmental cost of production. GDP, as the broad measure of a nation's production of goods and services as priced in the market, is the sum of corporate balance sheets which also ignore the social and environmental costs incurred. In economic jargon, these costs are "externalities" which accountants can ignore and which are "externalized" to taxpayers, society and future generations.
Statistical bureaus were caught in the middle of these conflicts, between powerful ministries of economics, finance, trade and central banks and the weaker ministries of social welfare, health, education and environment. Thus, the growing data on social and environmental costs of production and business-as-usual were sidelined and relegated to "satellite accounts" which were naturally ignored as less important than GDP-growth.
Meanwhile, many socially and environmentally responsible companies began in the 1980s to include these social costs in their accounting and investment decisions. These enhanced accounting practices expand the single money-based bottom line to the new "triple bottom line" (people, planet, profit) used today by over 600 global corporations. These practices reduce risks that might be lurking over their balance sheets by ignoring or "externalizing" the social and environmental costs of their operations. Examples of financial firms using enhanced accounting and risk analysis include:

• Global Reporting Initiative, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, International, Toronto, Canada
• Domini Social Investments, USA
• Vigeo, France
• Sustainable Asset Management, Zurich, Switzerland
• Swiss Reinsurance, Zurich, Switzerland
• Calvert Group, USA
• Generation Investment Management, UK
• EcoSecurities, Brazil & UK
• ASRIA, Hong Kong
• Friends Provident, London, UK
• Triodos Bank, The Netherlands and UK
• Rabobank, International, The Netherlands

Today, financial groups promoting enhanced environmental, social and ethical reporting include:

• UN Global Compact - 3000 companies worldwide
• UN Principles of Responsible Investment -$10 trillion in assets
• Carbon Disclosure Project - $41 trillion in assets, UK
• CERES - $3.7 trillion in assets, USA
• The Equator Principles - used by banks worldwide
• Social Investment Forum - $2.3 trillion in assets with over 500 member practitioners and institutions, USA
• ChinaCSR.com - reporting on corporate social responsibility
• Instituto Ethos - member companies total 37% of Brasil's economy
• Environmental Markets Association, UK
• Enhanced Analytics Initiative - $2.5 trillion in assets, UK

So the question is why have macro-economists not yet made these same adjustments to GDP? While GDP continues to "externalize" all those social and environmental costs, it keeps blinding politicians and government officials to all their risks to society: from global warming, epidemics and resource depletion to poverty gaps, and social exclusion.
All these issues were debated at the "Beyond GDP" conference, and many new proposals are expected outcomes. The initiative for the "Beyond GDP" conference came from the European Commission and Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, joined by Eurostat and the OECD's statistical bureau as well as civic groups - the WorldWide Fund for Nature and the Club of Rome, long-time champion of correcting GDP.
I was honored to represent the Club of Rome on the Beyond GDP Organizing Committee, and my company Ethical Markets Media LLC, producer of the TV series "Ethical Markets" on PBS station in the USA, funded the GLOBESCAN survey. Our current TV special is "Growing the Green Economy." While an advisor to the Calvert Group of socially-responsible mutual funds in the USA, I also co-created the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators on display at the European Parliament's Exhibition Hall where we shared a booth with Jacksonville's Quality Indicators for Progress, with ample support from JCCI's Ben Warner and two of our distinguished Research Advisory Board: Dr. Carol Spalding and Dr. Francis Koster. Others on our Advisory Board who made contributions to Beyond GDP included Prof. Zhouying Jin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Dr. Tachi Kiuchi and Dr. Norio Yamamoto from Japan.
Hundreds of new and more inclusive indicators of national progress were represented such as the ISEW (Indicators of Social and Economic Welfare), the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), the Genuine Progress Index (GPI), the Happy Planet Index (HPI), and the Gross National Happiness (GHI) of Bhutan. Many other exhibits included the Ecological Footprint, the Living Planet Index, the World Bank's Wealth of Nations Index as well as indices from Brazil and a presentation by Thais Corral of our Advisory Board and Director of REDEH in Rio de Janeiro, who hosted the ICONS conference on implementing all these new indicators in Curitiba in 2003. Other regions and cities have gone ahead and produced their own indicators, including Sao Paulo, Brazil, Seattle and, of course, Jacksonville, Florida.
The dam has burst, and public pressure has finally forced this long-overdue "Beyond GDP" debate into the open. Will we allow entrenched economic interests to continue benefiting from faulty GDP-measured growth or will broader measures of progress steer countries toward sustainable forms of true wealth and progress?


The Blogger Ref Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics