Transforming Economics Into True Wealth
November 2012
The statement on TRANSFORMING ECONOMIES INTO TRUE WEALTH is an invitation to fully engage in the planetary whole-system shift now under way. Many SRI investment professionals recognize our human responsibility for the many breakdowns in our societies and enfolding ecosystems resulting from our limited consciousness: climate change, hunger, poverty, conflicts, financial crises and ecological destruction. These systemic breakdowns are accelerating due to global interconnectedness and now driving the breakthroughs worldwide occurring below the radar of the mainstream mass media. The 193 country members of the United Nations have recognized human interdependence and that no nation acting alone can solve these global systemic crises. Thus, they have pooled their sovereignty, however imperfectly, seeking solutions through treaties, agreements, protocols, institutions and agencies to promote the common good and all life on planet Earth. Likewise, many public, private and civic sector organizations, professional and academic groups are also coalescing to take broader responsibility.
Full statement and see signatories
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STATEMENT ON TRANSFORMING FINANCE BASED ON ETHICS AND LIFE’S PRINCIPLES
June 27, 2012 © 2012
The STATEMENT ON TRANSFORMING FINANCE BASED ON ETHICS AND LIFE’S PRINCIPLES begins with the biological truth that the human species is interdependent with all other life forms on Planet Earth. A joint collobration with Biomimicry 3.8, the statement shows how human societies, cultures, values and belief systems are informed by and modeled on the Life’s Principles, which are strategies universal to all organisms. Ethical markets and finance, along with Life’s Principles and biomimicry, should provide the basis for all production and exchange of goods, community structures and services. This includes the design of monetary systems, investments, banking, financing, bartering, reciprocal exchange, payments, crowdfunding, compensation and unpaid gifting, sharing, cooperatives, reproduction of future, generations, provision of public goods, infrastructure, collective health, education and life-supporting services.
Link to full statement and signatories
Video: Building the Woman’s World Banking Movement
Building the Woman’s World Banking Movement
Description
Building the Woman’s World Banking Movement – interview with Michaela Walsh; Ethical Markets Media, 2013. Michaela Walsh is Founding President of Women’s World Bank http://www.swwb.org/. Its mission is to expand the economic assets, participation and power of low-income women and their households by helping them access financial services, knowledge and markets.
Michaela Walsh was a member of the Founding Committee of WWB (Woman’s World Banking), and served as the organization’s Founding President from 1975 to 1990. Prior to that, Ms. Walsh served as a Project Director for the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and as a Program Associate with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Ms. Walsh subsequently founded the Global Student Leadership and Enterprise Management at Manhattanville College. She was the first woman partner of Boettcher & Company, and the first woman manager of Merrill Lynch International. Ms. Walsh serves on the boards of several organizations, and has been a member of the WWB Board of Trustees since its inception in 1979.
The mission of the Women’s World Banking global network is to expand the economic assets, participation and power of low-income women and their households by helping them access financial services, knowledge and markets.
Hazel Henderson is the founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC
http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/ and the creator and co-executive Producer of its TV series. She is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of The Axiom and Nautilus award-winning book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006) and eight other books. She co-edited, with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul, The UN: Policy and Financing Alternatives, Elsevier Scientific, UK 1995 (US edition, 1996), and co-authored with
Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda,
Planetary Citizenship (2004).
Tags
Bank (Building Function),World,women,interviews Michaela Walsh,Hazel Henderson,Michaela Walsh,Women’s World Banking,Manhattanville College,Boettcher & Company,financial services,Ethical Markets Media,Growing the Green Economy,Planetary Citizenship,Bruce Merwin
Video: The Green Economy — A Wide Shot
The Green Economy — A Wide Shot – interview with Gregory Wendt; Ethical Markets Media, 2013. This is a wide-ranging discussion of the green movement today. Greg Wendt is founder of the Green Economy Think Tank http://www.greeneconomythinktank.org/ which convenes sustainability leaders to catalyze ideas into action to grow the green economy through forums, events and conferences.
With increasing concern about the economy, environmental degradation, public health and gridlock in civic leadership, there is a great need for new ways to make change happen. Communities and Cities all over the world must create innovative solutions to economic development which creates jobs for their residents, while maintaining quality of life with cleaner, healthier and safer business practices. To meet these challenges, a new type of leadership is emerging which cultivates the resources and authority to convene and continue the dialogues for creating shared visions, outcomes and shared success.
Green Economy Think Tank (GETT) is a non-profit organization that catalyzes the convening of these new leaders from diverse sectors who are focused on implementing and improving our nation’s green economy. It enables and revolutionizes the way corporations, government agencies and communities interact, build consensus and achieve goals that are locally and nationally topics of discussion. The Green Economy Think Tank fosters collaboration between leading green economy initiatives and groups through events and programs that bring together leaders from business, education, government, health, technology, and community in regions around the country. It conducts events and forums utilizing unique collective intelligence technologies to facilitate group collaboration and participation for evolution of actionable intelligence. Its Day Events bring together thought leaders from private and public sectors and engages them to lead in evolving innovations, actions and ideas to further economic growth in alignment with growing wealth while maintaining the vision for a better world for future generations.
Hazel Henderson is the founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC
http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/ and the creator and co-executive Producer of its TV series. She is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of The Axiom and Nautilus award-winning book Ethical Markets: Growing the
Green Economy (2006) and eight other books. She co-edited, with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul, The UN: Policy and Financing Alternatives, Elsevier Scientific, UK 1995 (
US edition, 1996), and co-authored with Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda,
Planetary Citizenship (2004).
Tags
Hazel Henderson,Gregory Wendt,Green Economy Think Tank,Green Economy,Ethical Markets Media,The Axiom and Nautilus,Daisaku Ikeda,Planetary Citizenship,Bruce Merwin
Video: Banking for the Common Good
Banking for the Common Good
Description
Banking for the Common Good – interview with Mary Houghton, Ethical Markets Media, 2013. Mary Houghton is the co-founder of ShoreBank, once the largest and oldest community development bank in the US. Hazel Henderson interviews Mary Houghton about community development banking movement today.
Houghton, along with Milton Davis, James Fletcher, and Ron Grzywinski purchased what was then South Shore Bank to fight redlining in the Chicago neighborhood. She retired as president in May 2010.
ShoreBank was a community development bank founded and headquartered in Chicago. At the time of its closing it was the oldest and largest such institution, and in 2008 had $2.6 billion in assets. It was owned by ShoreBank Corporation, a regulated bank holding company. ShoreBank had branches in Chicago’s South and West sides, Cleveland, and Detroit. Between 2000 and 2006, ShoreBank issued nearly $900 million in loans to citizens in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. ShoreBank and its affiliated companies have projects in 30 countries.
In the early 1980s, Houghton and Grzywinski worked with Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (Yunus and Grameen Bank received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize). From 1986 to 2001, Houghton served on the Board of Directors of Accion International. Houghton serves as a director of the Calvert Foundation, the Rapid Results Institute, and Women’s World Banking. She is a member of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. Houghton received a B.A. cum laude from Marquette University and an M.A. in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.
Houghton has received several awards and honors:
In 2001, she was awarded Honorary Doctorate of Business by Northern Michigan University.
In 2004, she was named “Community Banker of the Year” by American Banker magazine
http://www.americanbanker.com/magazine/ for her work making ShoreBank “the gold standard of
community development banks.”
In 2009, Houghton accepted the 2009 Economic Opportunity Achievement Award from The Opportunity Collaboration in Ixtapa, Mexico for her work “providing financial services and information to residents who were excluded from traditional banking circles.”
In 2009, she was invited to deliver the “Leaders Forum Lecture” at the Yale School of Management.
Jointly with co-founder Ron Grzywinski, Houghton received the Hesburgh Award for Ethics in Business from the University of Notre Dame, in 2008, and the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award at Harvard University, in 2006. They were both named to U.S. News & World Report’s list of America’s Top Leaders.
Hazel Henderson is the founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC
http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/ and the creator and co-executive Producer of its TV series. She is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of The Axiom and Nautilus award-winning book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006) and eight other books. She co-edited, with Harlan Cleveland and Inge Kaul, The UN: Policy and Financing Alternatives, Elsevier Scientific, UK 1995 (
US edition, 1996), and co-authored with
Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, Planetary Citizenship (2004).
ORIGINAL TRANSFORMING FINANCE STATEMENT
Link to Full Statement and Signatories
Bibliography
September 13, 2010, St. Augustine, Fl, USA; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Greenwich, CT , USA
Financial experts, warning of future crises, call for re-affirming finance as a global commons, first recognized at Bretton Woods in 1945.
The TRANSFORMING FINANCE group, as beneficiaries and active participants in global capital markets, affirmed their responsibility to reform finance. The full TRANSFORMING FINANCE Statement asserts that “Financial markets are founded on trust – now eroded by the irresponsible and unethical behavior of many players, including many of our leading financial institutions.” The signers, from the European Union, China, India, Australia, Brazil, Canada and the USA agree that “unbridled greed-driven speculation, the improper use of public infrastructure technology for activities such as high-frequency trading, together with a misguided self-regulatory ideology, damaged the financial commons and the trust on which we all depend.”
The TRANSFORMING FINANCE group outlined necessary principles and conditions to operate the shared global financial architecture consistent with 21st century realities. The group pledged to continue their own efforts to modernize capital markets to serve human societies as one of the tools to manage the global commons, using the new accounting standards and national accounting beyond “efficient market” and “rational actor” models, now outdated by findings in brain and neurosciences.
Video Series: Transforming Finance
 Building the Woman’s World Banking Movement – interview with Michaela Walsh; Ethical Markets Media, 2013. Michaela Walsh is Founding President of Women’s World Bank http://www.swwb.org/. Its mission is to expand the economic assets, participation and power of low-income women and their households by helping them access financial services, knowledge and markets. |
 Banking for the Common Good – interview with Mary Houghton, Ethical Markets Media, 2013. Mary Houghton is the co-founder of ShoreBank, once the largest and oldest community development bank in the US. |
 The Green Economy — A Wide Shot – interview with Gregory Wendt; Ethical Markets Media, 2013. This is a wide-ranging discussion of the green movement today.
|
 China’s New Development – interview with Zhouying Jin, “Transforming Finance” –
an Ethical Markets Media production © 2010 |
 Finance Should Serve Society – interview with Steve Waddell, “Transforming Finance” – an Ethical Markets Media production © 2010 |
 Escaping the Web of Debt – interview with Ellen Brown, “Transforming Finance” – an Ethical Markets Media production © 2010 |
