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VALUE BLOGSeditors deskEye on The Markets
Making Do launches at Maker Faire Africa 2010Making Do, a new book by Steve Daniels, highlights the power of the Jua Kali (hot sun) industries in Kenya. Here’s an excerpt, from The Atlantic.The book debuted at Maker Faire Africa 2010 in Nairobi, a festival of informal know-how curated by my esteemed friend and colleague and all-around good guy Emeka Okafor. This weekend in Nairobi, Kenya, technologists and hackers from [...] How Africa can become the next BricBy Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, coined the Brics acronymIn an FT.com Op-Ed The visit by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma to China this week with a large entourage of businesspeople and officials has understandably drawn a lot of comment. He is no doubt keen to promote close ties with Beijing, which just last year rose [...] Where Google DotOrg went wrongGoogle’s philanthropy, dubbed DotOrg, launched in 2004 with bold ambitions and almost $1 billion in seed funding. But the corporate culture built by engineers proved challenging for the development experts brought in to run DotOrg. Six years later, the philanthropy’s leadership has been replaced and its ambitions have shrunk.Before the dust settled from the 7.0 [...] Reinventing the City to Combat Climate ChangeReinventing the City to Combat Climate ChangeCities produce 80 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and that number will grow as more people in the developing world move to urban centers. How we develop urban infrastructure over the next 30 years will determine whether cities become a growing force for environmental destruction or primary sources [...] United Nations Association forms alliance to surviveAmid declining financial support, nonprofit organization teams up with Ted Turner-funded U.N. Foundation. The United Nations Association of the United States of America stayed true to its mission to foster American support for the United Nations even when the U.N.’s own actions seemed to undercut American values. And today U.S. support for the U.N. is as [...] Capital For Good (Xigi.net)
High Impact Philanthropy in the Downturn: Focus on Housing, Health, and Hunger (A Guide for Donors) is available for free download from UPenn?s Center for High Impact PhilanthropyHello, I’m Autumn Walden from UPenn’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy. I wanted to share with you all the direct link to the electronic pdf file of our latest research on effective philanthropy in the downturn. If you are interested in downloading our previous philanthropic investment guides in malaria and education, or our study on [...] Value Networks Discussion Group› Re: Intersec between Value Network and System Thinking? › Re: Intersec between Value Network and System Thinking? › Re: Intersec between Value Network and System Thinking? A Value Network is any web of relationships that generates tangible and intangible value through complex dynamic exchanges between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations. VIDEO
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Off The Wires
Fears grow over global food supply
Wheat prices rose further on Friday in the wake of Russia’s decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 months, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08.
In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed and 288 wounded.
Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Thursday extended an export ban first introduced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to a near two-year high. It came as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization called an emergency meeting to discuss the wheat shortage. FT.com
Karzai's Brother Calls For U.S. To Guarantee Kabul Bank Deposits Amid Bank Run
Hamid Karzai's older brother wants the U.S. to guarantee deposits at Afghanistan's largest bank to stop a developing bank run fueled by fears of fraud. Mahmoud Karzai, Kabul Bank's third-biggest shareholder, told The Washington Post that "America should do something"
Well he would wouldn't he? A bit rich coming from the reportedly biggest opium dealer in the country!
Financial Services on Aisle Nine: Wal-Mart Gives Banks a Run for Their Money Despite being pilloried by the public lately, a banker's lot can't be all that bad.
At least, that's what Wal-Mart executives must be thinking. Over recent months, there has been a flurry of announcements from the world's largest retailer about the expanding array of banking products sold at its U.S. stores.
Company officials insist that their main aim is to reach the "unbanked" and "underbanked" with the type of low-cost services that cemented Wal-Mart's reputation as a retail giant. So do traditional retail banks on Main Street USA have reason to worry?
New US proxy access rules a “win-win”, says CalPERS
Controversial new rules to facilitate shareholder nominations of directors at US companies have been welcomed by pension funds and corporate governance activists. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the US financial regulator, yesterday approved rules to give shareholders who own 3% of a company’s stock for at least three years the right to have their board nominee included in companies’ proxy materials. The process was prohibitively expensive prior to the ruling. The long-debated and controversial issue went through in a 3-2 vote. “I have great faith in the collective wisdom of shareholders to determine which competing candidates will best fulfil the responsibilities of serving as a director,” said SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro.
Robert Reich: Corporate Rotten Eggs
There are rotten apples in every industry. Or perhaps I should say rotten eggs.
One especially rotten egg is Jack DeCoster, whose commercial egg agribusiness, which goes under the homey title "Wright County Egg," headquartered in Galt, Iowa, sends eggs all over the country under many different brands. Those eggs have now laid low thousands of Americans with salmonella poisoning, and may well infect thousands more. HuffPo.com
Bed, Bath & Bribes:
How can a business possibly make a profit if it doesn't play by the rules of a corrupt system?
A new memoir by Swedish businessman Lennart Dahlgren explores just that quandary. Dahlgren spent nearly a decade battling bureaucrats to bring furniture giant IKEA to Russia. His book, Despite Absurdity: How I Conquered Russia While It Conquered Me, reveals his behind-the-scenes struggles with officials who were ready to throw countless obstacles in IKEA's path unless they gave in to the system. Published in Swedish last November and now translated into Russian, the book has provoked heated discussion in Russia by providing a shocking and unusually public glimpse at the pervasive rot of Putin's system. www.foreignpolicy.com/
Intel + McAfee Purchase highlights cybercrime fears
Chipmaker Intel’s $7.7bn purchase of McAfee, the security software provider, on Thursday gave dramatic proof of how concerns about cybercrime and cyber espionage have penetrated deeply into the technology establishment.
Even within a security industry that had been expecting a wave of consolidation, the deal is surprising.
Intel is paying a 60 per cent premium to Wednesday’s closing price of McAfee shares and McAfee’s reputation has suffered recently. And, as a chipmaker selling to manufacturers, Intel cannot immediately help put McAfee’s products inside the computers of the software group’s key customer base of corporations trying to protect themselves against cyber attacks. But the long-range view of governments and cyber security experts is that security must be tied as much as possible to the architecture of the internet and to the fundamental building blocks of the devices used to access it. FT.com
'Booze, Bets, Bombs And Butts' -- 'Vice Fund' Touts Recession-Proof PortfolioBOSTON — So much for virtue. Sin is in. That's according to a mutual fund manager who's finding plenty of investment opportunities in companies profiting from vices like smoking, drinking and gambling.
Jeff Middleswart's aptly named Vice Fund is beating the house in a down market. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is down 1.9 percent this year. Yet stocks of cigarette makers are up an average 12 percent.
The Vice Fund's three biggest holdings are cigarette stocks: Philip Morris International Inc., Lorillard Inc. and Altria Group Inc. That explains why the fund is up 4.5 percent this year, ranking in the top 3 percent of its large-blend fund peers according to Morningstar. Defense contractors – another fund mainstay – are up an average 12 percent. Some group contractors in this category because their profits are tied to the escalation of conflicts. Alcoholic beverages? Up 6 percent.
Vice is the lifeblood of a fund that's a counterpoint to investment products touting themselves as socially responsible because they favor companies ostensibly benefiting society. This year, those stocks aren't doing anything special. An index of socially responsible stocks, the MSCI USA Large Cap ESG, is down 1.7 percent. HuffPo.com
Businesses resist ‘conflict minerals’ law
US manufacturers are mounting a lobbying campaign over a provision slipped into the financial reform legislation requiring companies to declare products containing minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Dodd-Frank act includes a clause that effectively classifies resources from Congo as “conflict minerals”, mimicking previous campaigns, which targeted so-called “blood diamonds” from countries with poor human rights records.
The mandatory disclosure follows diamonds to the trade in minerals that has helped to fuel conflict in the Congo. “This will affect almost every US manufacturing sector. It covers colt an and ultimately tin, which are used right across industry,” said Rick Goss, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council.
Widespread use of minerals from the region in electronics products has triggered headlines attacking companies such as Apple and Microsoft for selling “genocide phones”. FT.com
China's economy: Hello America
CHINA has become the world's second biggest economy according to data released on Monday August 16th. Japan's economy fell behind China's at market exchange rates in the second quarter (it has been number three in PPP terms for some time).
These numbers are not strictly comparable: Japan's data have been seasonally adjusted while those for China have not. Quibbles aside, Japan will surely be eclipsed soon, if it has not been already.
Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing. Economist.com
Schwarzman likens President to Hitler
Steve Schwarzman, head of the private equity giant Blackstone Group was forced to apologize for his comments that compared the President to Adolph Hitler. The comments reportedly stunned the audience.
All this over the President’s plan to raise hedge funds’ carried interest tax from 15% to 35%! Give me a break…
The New York Post notes that Schwarzman also ignited a controversy last year, when he made another World War II reference.
"At that time, he compared the sub-prime mortgage crisis to Nagasaki, Japan, after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city," the Post reports. The bomb left the city "with noodle salesmen with few noodles or customers," said Schwarzman.
The Private Equity Council, a lobbying group, is asking members to wage a "grassroots" campaign against the tax hikes by approaching their local Congressmen.
For more:
Robert Reich: The Truth About China As #2 All over the world, we're witnessing a growing gap between production and consumption, while the environment continues to degrade. The Chinese machine is fast heading for a breakdown only because it's growing fastest.
North Korea offers ginseng to pay Czech debt
A great offbeat story - and big online hit - with the tale of North Korea's attempt to pay off its debt to the Czech Republic in ginseng, a medicinal root not much used in the eastern European country. FT.com
Norwegian global fund takes €1.1bn hit on BP
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global has disclosed it has lost more than €1bn on its 1.75% stake in oil giant BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The fund has seen its stake plummet from NOK18.9bn (€2.4bn) at the end of March to just NOK10.6bn (€1.3bn) at the end of June, according to the fund’s second quarter report released today. “The single worst-performing investment was in oil producer BP,” the fund said in a statement.
Mobile Gutenberg, Banking Papacy
Mobile phones, in all regions of the world, are somewhat different than computers because they inherently operate using a form of currency.
To talk on a phone, you have to pre-pay for ‘air time’ or credit. A mobile subscription is just an advance or delayed payment for the same allowance. Thus, every thing you do on a mobile phone is a transaction.
What’s unique to the mobile platform is that these transactions can be treated like currency. If I pay for $20 dollars of mobile credit and I send that $20 dollars of credit to a friend, he now has ways of getting $20 of value (either directly or indirectly) from my transaction.
Simple right? What’s missing from that exchange? The Bank.
Now here's something you wouldn't expect.
A non-profit public interest group is suing Coca-Cola, on the grounds that the company's vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?
In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."
Does this mean that you'd have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named "vitaminwater," a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?
The first-ever Clean Energy Ministerial meeting, hosted by US Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, concluded last Tuesday, launching 11 new initiatives to promote the advancement of clean technologies globally.
Grand theft American Stolen cars which are most costly to insurers
AMERICA'S car thieves show clear preferences in the vehicles they steal. Size, speed and luxury are all important factors when it comes to selecting a target. But the country's car thieves are, at least, patriotic.
If America's car making giants have struggled in recent years to build vehicles that match the public taste, they are keeping car thieves happy.
Only two of the top ten stolen cars in America (measured in terms of cash paid out by insurers) come from a foreign manufacturer.
America's car criminals are more suspicious of Japanese or European models and are reluctant to be seen in smaller cars. A reluctance to nick Toyota Priuses shows they have little regard for the environment either.
Full article in the Economist
BusinessWeek : U.S. Probes BP Disclosure, Trades After Spill
The U.S. is examining whether BP Plc made misleading statements after its Gulf of Mexico oil spill and if company executives traded stock based on insider information about the accident, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal wrongdoing and the Securities and Exchange Commission is probing potential civil violations, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. BP disclosed July 27 in a filing to U.S. regulators that the SEC and Justice Department “are conducting informal enquiries into securities matters,” related to the oil spill triggered by an April 20 explosion. BP declined to elaborate at the time.
David Stockman: Republicans Have Abandoned Their Principles And Crippled The Economy
Time to reassess how fund managers are rewarded
Fund managers have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of the financial sector’s growth over the past 30 years. Bankers may routinely earn million-pound bonuses but some hedge fund and private-equity managers have become billionaires.
Seldom has so much been earned by so few.
These riches have been generated despite the ability of investors to take advantage of low-cost exchange-traded funds and index-trackers.
Investors have surged off-piste in search of higher returns. In aggregate, however, they will merely end up paying higher fees (typically, a 2% annual fee plus 20% on performance), a phenomenon this column [in the Economist] has described as “catch two-and-twenty”.
Golden parachutes
BP has announced its chief executive, Tony Hayward, was stepping down after just three years in the job.
He leaves with a year’s salary, $1.6m, and a pension reported to be worth $17.6m, accrued over 28 years of service. On the same day the company revealed a quarterly loss of $27 billion, reflecting the cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Hayward has received criticism over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon spill. For all the opprobrium heaped on him over the last few months, Mr. Hayward's payout is modest compared with those enjoyed by many similarly high-profile bosses.
Boy, are we lucky! Check out the list on the Economist.com and see just how bad it could have been if he’d worked for one of those rude, uncouth, unsporting non-British companies.
Robert Reich: The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits From Jobs
Big American companies won't begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won't start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks.
Private equity's challenge in the Middle East: how to spend 11 billion dollars?
Private equity players in the Middle East face a major challenge.
With an estimated US$11 billion in un-invested funds raised before the global financial crisis in 2008, PE firms in the region are under mounting pressure to find and make meaningful investments.
At the height of the PE industry in the region between 2005 and 2007, there were about 70 transactions a year, with an average size of US$30 million. Using this yardstick, it would take more than five years to invest these funds.
BP sends Tony Hayward to Russia to appease US
Off to Siberia:
BP is poised to stun the City tomorrow by nominating Tony Hayward to the board of its Russian business as a consolation prize for being axed as chief executive.
Paul Hawken: The High Cost of Cheap Food (video)
Excerpted from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s, Cooking For Solutions 2010 media conference, Paul Hawken eloquently explains how the price of food is divorced from its true costs, and what this really means for society, at large.
This is a central theme that runs through much of the sustainable food movement’s core beliefs, and those advocating a profound change to the existing structure of the food system. Michael Pollan, in his 2008 “Open Letter to the Next Farmer In Chief“, writes:
“Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration— the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda.”
Indeed, the massive consolidation of agricultural food companies into giant transnational corporations may well trace its origins to Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, whose prime directive was to develop a plan to keep U.S. food prices at a reliably low level. With the recent decision of the Department of Justice to investigate the mounting evidence of over-consolidation of the food industry, it seems fair to ask whether the pendulum of centralization, maximization of production, monoculture industrial farming, and the existence of mega-farms (technically referred to as CAFO’s), has shifted the pendulum too far.
The high cost of cheap food begs a serious question: who should foot the bill to cover the full external costs of industrial farming—the American people, as has largely been the case—or the corporations who chiefly benefit from the existing structure?
CUpS Talks
“Goldman's SEC Settlement Is About Two Weeks' Profit.”
On ProPUBLICA: http://bit.ly/bEZeOy Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to settle the SEC's civil fraud lawsuit against it. The SEC is touting the sum as the “largest-ever penalty paid by a Wall Street firm,” but how much does the settlement actually hurt Goldman? We looked a up few numbers to put things into perspective:
It’s about eight times what the head honcho has taken home in a year. In 2007, Goldman did the deal at the center of the SEC's suit, CEO Lloyd Blankfein took home $68 million in salary and bonus.
Quality of death
CUSTOMER-satisfaction surveys are, alas, unsuitable for rating the quality of death. So the Economist Intelligence Unit has devised a ranking of end-of-life care. It rates 40 mostly rich countries by how well they care for the dying.
Huge surprise: Britain tops the table.
Rethinking the “third world”
The poor world has changed fundamentally. Others are barely coming to grips with the implications:
Cold-war terminology implied that third-world countries had limited room for independent manoeuvre. They aligned themselves with one side, or got ground between millstones. That is changing.
Walter Russell Mead, an American foreign-policy analyst, argues that Brazil and Turkey are both countries once within America’s circle of influence where new leaders have challenged longstanding domestic elites and are trying to shake off their reliance upon America. In both cases their ambitions are global.
Developing countries are becoming something else, too: engines of the world economy. Since 2008, says the World Bank, they have contributed almost all of what economic growth there has been. In the 1980s they accounted for 33.7% of global income, at purchasing-power parities. This year, the share will be 43.4%.
Source: Economist.com
"Is Humanitarian Design the new Imperialism?" Does our desire to help do more harm than good? So asks Bruce Nussbaum on his very good blog. For example he writes the following on the One Laptop Per Child Initiative:
The Indian establishment locked OLPC out precisely because it perceived the effort as inappropriate technological colonialism that cut out those responsible for education in the country—policymakers, teachers, and curriculum builders, parents. OLPC never got into China either. Or most of the large nations it had originally targeted.
How much a country's leader is paid compared to GDP per person ON MONDAY July 5th Raila Odinga, Kenya's prime minister, rejected the pay increase he was awarded by the country's parliament last week. MPs had granted Mr Odinga a rise to nearly $430,000 a year, while giving themselves a 25% increase to $175,000.
Source: http://www.economist.com/node/16525240?fsrc=nwl
Canada should follow its own carbon policy, says Michael Porter
The carbon capture-and-trade model that the U.S. "has patched together" is too complicated and blunts incentives that would enhance innovation and competitiveness, said Porter at a symposium organized by the Sustainable Prosperity network.
Source: http://www.globe-net.com/
Tapping Crowds for sustainable ideas and funding
If crowd sourcing can be used to help tackle economic problems in Ireland—not to mention those of the more personal kind—then why not the global environmental imperative? That, indeed, is just the aim of the Globe Forum, which hopes to use crowd sourcing to help people around the world build a more sustainable future.
Now in beta, Stockholm-based Globe Forum operates conferences and active online communities to help match the creators of good ideas with those who can help bring them to life. Specifically, the organization hopes to bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, corporations and the public sector in a natural space “where breakthrough solutions can occur collaboratively,” as the site puts it. Its matchmaking service, for instance, aims to match supply and demand for sustainable solutions, with expert facilitation, consulting and project management by the Globe Forum organization.
Its intelligence arm, meanwhile, strives to provide market-leading research, industry insight and access to innovation. A crowd funding section lets potential investors browse through promising new project ideas and fund the ones they like, while projects and organizations with sustainability challenges to be solved can post those in Globe Forum's “Challenges” section for a little collective brainstorming.
After hosting a conference in Stockholm this spring, Globe Forum's next large-scale event will take place in Dublin in November. Website: www.globeforum.com
Pass the statins
Poorer Countries Taking Over Global Economy
Ten years ago, the richest countries accounted for a large majority of economic activity. But the pendulum is swinging the other way. A new O.E.C.D. report finds that rich countries and poor countries now each contribute about an equal share of the global economy. And by 2030, developing countries will account for 57 percent of world G.D.P Source: NYT.com
US banks set to lose swaps fight
Defeat would deal blow to Wall Street
Banks are likely to lose a key lobbying battle in the US over whether they will be forced to spin off their lucrative swaps desks, according to people familiar with financial reform negotiations in Congress.
Defeat, which would be a further blow to Wall Street, has been made more likely by Paul Volcker, the influential former Federal Reserve chairman, softening his opposition to the provision.
Source: FT.com
Rolling Stone, which has generally been friendly to President Obama, rips into him with Tim Dickinson's investigative report:
'The Spill, The Scandal and the President: The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years -- and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder': The Spill, the Scandal and the President
"How to tell a fake NGO from a real one"
Also see
"Pretend NGO's" on Africa Unchained
With thanks to Emeka Okafor of Timbuktu Chronicles
In the storm of public and political fury that has hit BP in the US since the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20, the company’s shortage of native knowledge of America and how it responds to crisis has been painfully exposed.
The accident, which killed 11 men and risks the livelihoods of millions, would always have threatened BP’s future in the US. But a series of cultural misunderstandings has made its position more difficult.
The US accounts for about a quarter of BP’s production, almost a third of its reserves and more than half its refining capacity and retail outlets, according to analysts at ING.
Yet in spite of the country’s importance, BP is short of Americans in senior roles. Tony Hayward, the chief executive who has become the lightning rod for American anger, is British, as are the heads of its two main operating businesses and Andrew Gowers, head of media, a former editor of the Financial Times.
Brunswick, BP’s public relations consultancy, although well staffed with high-powered Americans, is a British firm. Full story on FT.com (subscription required)
They encourage mortgage holders not to be stupid, but when they disregard their own obligations it’s just a business decision.
http://dailybail.com/headlines/delicious -irony-mortgage-bankers-association-mba- dumps-headq.html
US places No. 85 -- behind Libya -- in Global Peace Index
The 2010 Global Peace Index is an attempt to quantify which countries are the most secure and the least violent. New Zealand is No. 1, Iraq is last, and the US is in the middle.
The United States ranks right in the middle at 85, achieving good marks for factors like respect for human rights and relations with neighbors and other countries, but low scores in areas like domestic homicides, military expenditures, and involvement in external conflicts.
Given the criteria, the US not surprisingly comes up as “less peaceful” than countries like Austria and Costa Rica, but it also trails Libya, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea.
The GPI’s conclusion that the world in 2009 was slightly less peaceful than in 2008 is based on the perspective that the global recession has been a catalyst for conditions that lead to violence.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Banks Sticking Fannie And Freddie With The Toxic Tab
Banks Say No. Too Bad Taxpayers Can’t.
FROM the earliest days of the credit crisis, the nation’s big financial institutions have been less than forthcoming about ballooning loan losses buried inside their books.
To some degree this is understandable: denial is a powerful thing, after all, and writing off troubled loans during a period of severe stress is, for bankers, the equivalent of getting a root canal.
As profits rebound at many of these institutions, however, artful dodging becomes more disturbing. And when disguising problems winds up harming the taxpayer — the same folks who rode to the rescue of banks with billions of dollars — the denial is downright exasperating.
Source: GRETCHEN MORGENSON on NYT.com
More than 650,000 households have not made mortgage payments in 18 months.
This according one estimate cited by the New York Times, in 19 percent of those cases, the lender hadn't even begun to take any action to seize the property.
This is a huge issue in the servicing industry and has some implications for mortgage-backed securities, perhaps helping to keep a lid on toxic-asset valuations.
Jim Kim of FierceFinance.com says,
“I doubt we'll see this situation reverse anytime soon. The attitude on the part of some borrowers seems to be: you got us into this mess, so we're just going to ride this out for a while.”
For more:
Greece will default on its national debt. That default will be due in large part to its membership in the European Monetary Union. If it were not part of the euro system, Greece might not have gotten into its current predicament and, even if it had gotten into its current predicament, it could have avoided the need to default. Source: www.project-syndicate.org Microsoft Spends $1.72M On Q1 Lobbying A disclosure report has been released that shows Microsoft spent $1.72 million in Q1 to lobby the federal government in several issues including health care. Last year the company only spent $1.65 million in Q1. Some of the other issues the firm lobbied include competition in online advertising, cyber security, patent reform, software piracy and international trade visas for foreign workers. Did they get their money’s worth?
Source: Adotas.com US financial reform: The Obama Administration Sells out to the Banking Lobby.
Let’s be clear.
When the Senate and House versions of the US finance bill are finally mashed together, the probability of another crisis will not fall one jot from where it will always be: 100 per cent.
New legislation never works because it is invariably backward looking – no one knows from what quiet corner the next monster will emerge.
Of course America’s politicians had to be seen to be doing something. It is a pity they have wasted so much effort doing the wrong things….
The final flaw is that the real problems have not been addressed. In order of importance:
Banks remain woefully undercapitalized.
No one really believes the biggest lenders will be allowed to fail.
There are inherent distortions in the system such as government [taxpayer] -insured deposit-capital.
Wall Street and Washington remain bedfellows.
This legislation guarantees plenty of paperwork and desk shuffling, but the next crisis is already germinating undetected somewhere.
Abstracted from FT.com’s LEX column, subscription required. E-mail the Lex team confidentially The turnover of bosses at the world's big companies remains high The turnover rate at the world's 2,500 biggest publicly listed companies remains high at 14.3%. Unsurprisingly, the financial sector saw most blood-letting, with 5.2% of bosses fired and a turnover rate of 17.2%. Full article in the Economist Wal-Mart giving $2 billion to fight hunger; Wal-Mart Corp. says it will give $2 billion in cash and food over five years to food banks throughout the U.S., including one billion pounds of food and $250 million to buy refrigerated trucks and improve their storage and logistics, marking one of the biggest corporate gifts ever, see The New York Times coverage: Wal-Mart donation story Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game
Putting an end to the "earnings game" requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value.
In place of earnings forecasts, management should provide information about the company's strategic goals and main value drivers. They should also discuss the risks associated with the strategies, and management's plans to deal with them.
Improving future relations between Main Street and Wall Street will require a new approach to disclosure based on a few simple rules of engagement.
By Monitor Group cofounder Joseph Fuller and HBS professor emeritus Michael C. Jensen on HBS Working Knowledge. BULLETIN: 'An NPR News Investigation has found that there could be at least 10 times the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig than previously estimated.
NPR's Richard Harris asked scientists to analyze a video that BP released of a pipe on the seafloor spewing out oil. The scientists concluded that 70,000 barrels of oil are spilling into the Gulf each day, plus or minus 20 percent – 14 times higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels per day from the U.S. Coast Guard. ...
These estimates indicate that the oil spilling into the Gulf has already far exceeded the equivalent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident.' 'Act Now, Apologize Later': Will Users 'Friend' Facebook's Latest Intrusion on Privacy? With more than 400 million users, social networking giant Facebook theoretically has a lot to lose if it sidesteps privacy without consumers' consent. But each time the company introduces new features that make users' personal information available to an increasingly wide circle, the site continues to grow. This time, the company's new "Open Graph" plan -- an attempt to link Facebook users to other parts of the web by sharing their "likes" and other activities across sites -- has come under scrutiny. Will users revolt -- or will they adapt to Facebook's ever-shifting privacy policies and what some Wharton experts view as deliberately difficult opt-out procedures? From Knowledge@Wharton.com Wall Street fight tests oil’s clout after BP spill [USA] A proposed amendment to the Senate’s Wall Street reform legislation has prompted a lobbying fight that will test the oil industry’s political clout following the Gulf of Mexico spill. The industry is opposing efforts by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to require oil, gas and mining companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments in connection with energy projects in their countries. The amendment’s backers say that greater “transparency” would help ensure that wealth from development flows to the public in energy-rich countries in Africa and elsewhere — rather than lining “the pockets of the rich,” as Lugar has put it. They also claim the plan benefits the United States by helping to create more stable global energy markets. From: TheHill.com Greenpeace Ranks Cisco First Among IT Companies Addressing Climate Change
In the third version of its Cool IT Leaderboard, Greenpeace “evaluates global IT companies on their leadership toward fulfilling the significant potential of IT-enabled emissions reductions across the rest of the economy.”
Overall, Greenpeace found that the potential for GHG reduction through deployment of IT solutions appears much stronger now, but “that there is significant room for companies to further demonstrate climate solutions and provide specific metrics for new solutions development.”
Cisco was the top-scoring company for offering IT solutions for GHG abatement, as well as reporting on its methodology for assessing the impacts of its solutions. Cisco also ranked among the leaders in setting aggressive targets for its own emissions reductions.
By Robert Kropp on SocialFunds.com Cargill Caught Destroying Rainforests
Cargill, the nation's largest importer of palm oil and supplier to some of the nation's largest food companies, was directly linked to rainforest destruction today in a report entitled Cargill's Problems with Palm Oil: A Burning Threat in Borneo, released by Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
The two plantations, located on Indonesian Borneo, are operating without legally required permits, resulting in clearing and burning of rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands and significant conflict with traditional and Indigenous communities. On one plantation, Cargill has cleared 10,500 hectares of rainforest since its operations began in 2005 - an area as large as all four Walt Disney World theme parks. Why We Hate the Oil Companies
As Shell’s then top U.S. executive traveled the country, he discovered how corporate leaders create their own reputation for arrogance — and lose their chance to deliver the right message.
Click here to read the full analysis.
From strategy + business
Note that: This article, by a former president of Shell Oil, was written before the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 22 and the subsequent oil leak. It is adapted from a book by the same name to be published May 25 by Palgrave Macmillan. Goldman Sachs Pursues A $500 Million Plan to Aid 10,000 Small Businesses
The harsh glare of negative publicity apparently isn’t going to keep Goldman Sachs from going through with a $500 million plan to aid America’s small businesses.
Announced last November, Goldman’s “10,000 Small Business Initiative” will invest $200 million in education and $300 million in developmental funding for qualifying firms.
On Monday, according to a reporter for Aol Small Business, an unnamed Goldman executive confirmed that the plan was still in progress and that first steps were under way. The New York Daily News reported last week that La Guardia Community College in Long Island City would be the first community college to spearhead the educational portion of the program.
From: WhatTheyThink.com $50 Million Federal Program Modeled on Bank on San Francisco Success Story
Ben Mangan, President and CEO of EARN, the nation’s leading provider of matched savings accounts for low-income workers, met last Thursday with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, City Treasurer Jose Cisneros and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Neal S. Wolin, to discuss ways in which the Bank on San Francisco can achieve national scalability.
EARN co-founded Bank on San Francisco in 2006 in partnership with Mayor Gavin Newsom and Treasurer Cisneros. Since its inception, this innovative program has helped thousands of low-income San Francisco residents open bank accounts as opposed to using disreputable check-cashing services that often charge usurious interest rates.
The result: in just four years over 50,000 “unbanked” San Franciscans have been successfully brought into the financial mainstream.
Based on this achievement, President Obama has included $50 million in the 2011 fiscal year budget to create a federal program modeled on the program—a powerful success story for the world of social innovation?
As Bank on San Francisco’s nonprofit managing partner, EARN and Mangan will serve as advisors as the program proceeds with a national rollout.
From: --(EON: Enhanced Online News)-- Comedians, late-night hosts have fun with Goldman Sachs
So did you hear about Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and the volcano in Iceland? The investment bank caused the eruption, because it was short the airlines.
You may also have heard about the new historical evidence just unearthed that proves the Roman Empire was brought down by its founders Golmanius and Sacsonia.
Of course you know that Goldman Sachs was short the White State Line when it caused the Titanic to sink. CNBC has collected the latest Goldman Sachs humor, which has not been limited to Internet jokes.
Jay Leno said this: "Just four days after Goldman Sachs cost investors $12 billion by failing to tell them that they're being investigated for fraud, they gave out another $5.4 billion in bonuses. Huh? Even Somali pirates are going, 'Come on!"'
David Letterman offered the top 10 excuses from the firm.
No. 10: "Huh?" No. 8: We planned on using the money to buy everyone in America a delicious double-down KFC sandwich. No. 5: Since when are financial institutions not allowed to screw their customers? No2: Everyone we ripped off got an "I got cheated by Goldman Sachs" tote bag.
For more:
By Jim Kim on FierceFinance.com One-Fourth of Nonprofits Are to Lose Tax Breaks
As many as 400,000 nonprofit organizations are weeks away from doomsday
At midnight on May 15, an estimated one-fifth to one-quarter of some 1.6 million charities, trade associations and membership groups will lose their tax exemptions, thanks to a provision buried in a 2006 federal bill aimed at pension reform.
The I.R.S. has long complained it lacks adequate data on nonprofit groups because so many of them did not file tax forms. Without basic facts about organizations, the agency has little chance of overseeing one of the most generous tax breaks the federal government offers.
Donors, whose appetite for information about nonprofit groups has increased exponentially in recent years, also struggle, said Robert G. Ottenhoff, who runs GuideStar, an online database of nonprofit tax forms and analysis that many donors rely on. “This is a good thing for the nonprofit sector, even though it will no doubt create a hardship for a pretty significant number of organizations,” Mr. Ottenhoff said.
Source NYT.com The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Others Collaborate on Environmental Editorial Project
The Atlantic, Mother Jones and Wired, along with four other news organizations, have teamed up to launch Climate Desk, a project dedicated to exploring the impact of climate change. Goldman accused of subprime fraud
US authorities on Friday accused Goldman Sachs of securities fraud that caused investor losses of more than $1bn, in the toughest regulatory crackdown so far on the excesses of the credit-bubble era.
At last we have come to the point. The behavior outlined in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s devastating complaint against Goldman Sachs neatly encapsulates the most important and damning of the charges that have circulated in the past two years against investment banks in general and Goldman in particular.
Sales of structured products backed by subprime securities triggered the credit crisis. The question is whether this was down to deliberate deception, incompetence or bad luck. Now the SEC will attempt to make a charge of deliberate deception stick.
Source: FT.com Seoul orders curfew on web games for under-18sVirtual eight-hour switch-off after addiction tragedy
South Korea has ordered the operators of the three most popular South Korean online games to block overnight access by users under the age of 18.
The curfew is a response to the case last month of a young couple who allowed their baby to starve to death while they raised a virtual child in an online game. The tragedy shocked the country and sparked calls for safeguards against web addiction.
Gaming is big business in Korea, with some 30 per cent of the population regularly playing online games from such industry leaders as NCSoft and Nexon, which together control nearly a quarter of the global market. The domestic market is estimated to be worth about $2.4bn, with exports valued at more than $1bn. Source: FT.com The latest Ponzi, doing God’s work (no really)
From at least 2005, Defendants Farah and Dodge, acting through their businesses FRM and CLM, operated a fraudulent ponzi scheme that defrauded at least $20 million from at least 150 investors.
Part of the proceeds allegedly went to the Center Harbor Christian Church, a non-denominational church said to be owned by the father of Scott Farah, one of the two main defendants.
The church, which was founded in New Hampshire in 1983, is now a relief defendant. Father Richard served as pastor, while Scott was treasurer and Donald Dodge, the other main defendant, was for a time a church elder.
Source: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/ iPads, Kindles, and the Close of a Chapter in Book Publishing
Two days ago, the first buyers of Apple's iPad began putting it through its paces, playing games, navigating the Internet, and downloading electronic books.
That groan you heard was from dozens of book publishers across the United States, reeling from yet another onslaught against their bread and butter: the paper book.
First it was Books on Tape, followed by books on phones, and then the king of business model killers, Amazon.com's Kindle.
Now the iPad, with its magnificent color display, glitzy "bookshelves," and easy-to-use interface, is poised to take another bite out of the hearts (and profits) of companies from Doubleday to Putnam.
"Traditional trade book publishers are scared."
Here Harvard Business School professor Peter Olson, former CEO of Random House, wonders if books themselves may be in jeopardy. Global Reporting Initiative's Wallace discusses corporate sustainability reporting
As more and more companies begin reporting their sustainability practices on financial disclosure forms, how can investors be assured they are receiving accountable and comparable information?
Mike Wallace, director of the Sustainability Reporting Framework at the Global Reporting Initiative, discusses his organization's reporting model and explains how companies can benefit from reporting their sustainability practices.
Greenpeace Uncovers The 'Financial Kingpin' Of The Climate Denial Industry
Now this is a real waste of money:
Koch Industries has “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition,” spending over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the climate denial machine, according to an extensive report today by Greenpeace.
By Brendan DeMelle Freelance writer and researcher on HuffPo.com Swedish goverment funds join Norway in ban of Israel’s Elbit Systems over West Bank barrier
Funds follow advice of Ethical Council in potentially controversial sell-off.
Four Swedish government pension funds with combined assets of SEK800bn (€81.8bn) have mirrored a decision by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund and blacklisted Elbit Systems, the Israeli defense technologies firm, from their investment portfolios for human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.
By Daniel Brooksbank | March 29th, 2010 | on www.responsible-investor.com/ Ford Motor signed a $1.8bn deal to sell its Volvo brand to Geely on Sunday in a move seen as emblematic of the shift in the global car industry’s centre of gravity from the US and western Europe to China.
The transaction, signed in Sweden, will see Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the parent of the Chinese carmaker; acquire 100 per cent of Volvo and its assets. Geely said the deal would nearly double its sales to 600,000 in five years, largely by building market share in its home country.See: Geely seals deal to buy Volvo from Ford on FT.com
AID WATCH: is a project of New York University's Development Research Institute (DRI).
This blog is principally written by William Easterly, author of "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" and "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," and Professor of Economics at NYU. It is co-written by Laura Freschi and by occasional guest bloggers. Our work is based on the idea that more aid will reach the poor the more people are watching aid.
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.” - H.L. Mencken Resource wealth need not be a curse
As post-conflict governments seek to complement aid with trade, a new path to development and peace in Africa is opening up.
Suspicion and disapproval have long attended the pursuit of profit in post-conflict societies. The economic incentives surrounding natural resources, in particular, are often seen as prolonging wars, obstructing peacemaking and holding back social progress.
Yet now, driven principally by the growing desire of post-conflict governments to complement aid with trade and the increasing availability of long-term investment, a new path to development and peace is opening up.
The principal western charge against such investments, particularly those from China – that they are pursued as a matter of commercial, as opposed to charitable, interest – is both accurate and entirely unobjectionable to many African governments. Indeed, the caricature of Asian investors in Africa rests on one significant misperception, as well as a broader underlying myth.
The misperception concerns the nature of the still-developing and complex relationship between African countries and Asian investors.
Abstracted from an Op-Ed by Mats Berdal and Nader Mousavizadeh in the FT. What Is Slow Money?
The Slow Food movement revolutionized the way many people think about food with its mantra: “good, clean, and fair.” Entrepreneur Woody Tasch wants to introduce the Slow Food ethos into the world of finance.
In his book, Slow Money (Chelsea Green, 2009), Tasch writes: “Be forewarned: slow money is no ‘ism.’” He is organizing for change. What does that change look like? It’s right there on the homepage of his non-governmental organization, the Slow Money Alliance: “A million Americans investing 1% of their assets in local food systems.”
The Slow Money philosophy is gaining momentum, and was given some attention recently from the document of record for the fast money crowd: the Wall Street Journal. What's Next as China's Credit Card Business Charges Ahead?
The number of credit cards issued by China's banks has skyrocketed to more than 170 million credit cards last year, from 60 million just three years earlier, and the number of cardholders doubled over this period, to 40 million from 20 million, according to Celent, a research and consulting firm.
Even more growth is expected. Experts predict that both the number of cards issued and cardholders will increase rapidly over the next few years as banks continue their aggressive pursuit of consumers with new card offerings.
And relatively speaking, China has lots of catching up to do -- in 2008, credit and debit card transactions in the country totaled US$24 billion, compared with Japan's US$209 billion and South Korea's $203 billion, according to a report on card payments in Asia-Pacific published by consultants at KPMG last year.
But bad debt is rising in China…
Source: China Knowledge@Wharton Are Rock star hedge fund managers doomed to fail?
When big name executives leave big banks to form hedge funds they generate big headlines and huge expectations. The latest example is Pierre-Henri Flamand, the 39-year-old star trader who has announced he will leave Goldman Sachs to start a fund.
But Business Week/Bloomberg has a warning for him and his investors: "Celebrity fund managers usually crash eventually.
They attract too much money, they get caught up in their own hype, and many of them weren't much good to start with. The lesson for investors is that if they want to invest in a hedge fund, the more obscure it is, the better."
By Jim Kim of FierceFinance.com
For more: China - The Newest Player in Canada's Arctic?
China is preparing for the Arctic being navigable during summer months.
An ice-free Arctic would provide China shorter shipping routes, possible access to natural resources and the incentive for closer cooperation with Arctic nations, especially the Nordic countries. But it also raises the possibility of new international tensions, according to a new SIPRI study launched in Oslo today. Source: http://www.globe.ca/ New Africa ESG focused boutique pledges 25% of revenues to charities
A new Africa-focused ESG boutique asset manager has launched with a novel, charitable aim of donating 25% of its fund revenues to charitable projects in Africa that it says could create 100,000 jobs by 2012 and a further 100,000 each year thereafter.
London-based, Alquity Investment Management, will integrate environmental, social and governance factors into a Luxembourg-registered UCITS III fund investing in listed African equities. Its initial fund raising goal is £50m, but the firm says it is targeting an eventual £500m (€568m) in assets from pension investors, high net worth individuals and charities.
The firm’s name is a combination of altruism and equity and chairman Paul Robinson, said: “We can transform the lives of some of the poorest people on the planet at no cost to investors.”
Source: www.responsible-investor.com The 'Luxury Prime': How Luxury Changes People
Are people who travel in town cars and on corporate jets different—on a psychological level—from you and me?
Does the availability of luxury goods "prime" individuals to be less concerned about or considerate toward others?
The answer from new research from the Harvard Business School seems to be yes. UNPRI coalition targets 86 major companies on Global Compact failure
Group targets reporting “laggards” that risk ejection.
Signatories to the $2.1 trillion United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment are writing to 86 major companies to pull them up over their failure to meet this year’s deadline to produce an annual corporate responsibility report in line with their membership of the UN Global Compact. Source: responsible-investor.com
There's been a whole lot of public anger about the bailouts of big Wall Street firms. But whether it was wise or not to bail out the top banks, at least it did not cost taxpayers an arm and a leg. In fact, it looks now like taxpayers got a pretty decent return on their "investment" in banks.
Fortune reports that, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the government will ultimately make a profit of $7 billion from assisting the banks: $3 billion from the Capital Purchase Program, which amounted to preferred stock purchases; $2 billion from bailing out Citigroup (C) and another $2 billion from bailing out Bank of America (BAC).
Not all aspects of TARP have been profitable. The bailouts of AIG (AIG), GM and Chrysler still look to be underwater. CBO projects the government will lose $9 billion from AIG bailouts and $47 billion from auto industry bailouts. TARP is actually helping the budget situation. It will yield an unexpected profit of $67 billion for 2010.
By Jim Kim on FierceFinance.com
For more: Russia diversifies into Canadian dollars
Russia’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it had started buying Canadian dollars and securities in a bid to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.
Analysts said the move could be a sign of increased diversification of emerging market central bank assets away from the dollar and into investments denominated in other commodity-linked currencies, such as the Australian dollar. Source: FT.com
The winter 2010 issue has just been released, to read the publication online or download a copy, just go to CECP’s Web site. SEC subpoenas big banks over CDOs
In a last ditch effort to become part of the solution US regulators finally start to probe global financial groups
Several leading international banks have received subpoenas from US regulators investigating one of the complex securities markets at the heart of the financial crisis, people familiar with the probe say.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sent subpoenas last month to banks including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital, these people said. Requests for information were also made by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees broker-dealers. Source: FT.com
How will Japan Airlines fare under its Zen monk boss?
Investors have driven Japan Airlines (JAL) shares into the floor, desperate to sell before they lose their shirts.
The price hit 7 yen, just 8 US cents, and a new record intraday low. A year ago it was 213 yen.
The selling has been unstoppable, pushing the airline towards the sixth biggest bankruptcy in Japanese history.
Source: BBC.com HAITI: MAJOR CORPORATIONS STEP UP
In response to the crisis in Haiti, companies around the world are scrambling to donate to the cause. In addition to Americans sending more than $8 million via text message donations facilitated by cell phone companies, companies of all sizes have quickly mobilized their efforts. Source: HuffPo Foundation protests Goldman Sachs Head Fake
Today begins the first hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington and its attendees include the likes of Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Brian T. Moynihan of Bank of America.
Reported in Reuters early on January 12, this story was about Goldman Sachs trying to block a proxy vote by some activist shareholders including, notably, the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
Calling this block the “the biggest head-fake in history,” Cummings Foundation President Lance Lindblom was sharply critical of the Goldman Sachs attempt to prevent the shareholders from voting to examine the wage disparities between the average worker and top executives. January 12, 2010; Reuters | Frank Rich: The Other Plot to Wreck America
The reckless Citi executives of our day may not have given themselves interest-free loans, but they often walked away with the short-term, illusionary profits while their employees were left with shredded jobs and 401(k)’s.
Among those Citi executives was Robert Rubin, who, as the Clinton Treasury secretary, helped repeal the last vestiges of Glass-Steagall after years of Wall Street assault.
Rubin has never apologized, let alone been held accountable. But he’s hardly alone. Even after all the country has gone through, the titans who fueled the bubble are heedless. In last Sunday’s Times, Sandy Weill, the former chief executive who built Citigroup (and recruited Rubin to its ranks), gave a remarkable interview to Katrina Brooker blaming his own hand-picked successor, Charles Prince, for his bank’s implosion.
Weill said he preferred to be remembered for his philanthropy. Good luck with that.
Citi, that “innovative” banking supermarket, destroyed far more wealth than Weill can or will ever give away. Risky Business: 10 Key Questions On Risk Management For The New Decade Sanford Lewis Corporate Disclosure Alert Blog: http://corporatedisclosurealert.blogspot.com
Banks Roll Out New Check, Credit Card Fees
The nation's banks will be bombarding customers with new fees and products in 2010 as they try to replace more than $50 billion in revenue wiped out by new rules that clamp down on certain business practices. Their greed knows no limit...beware! No Market Love for These Value-Creating Stocks In Goldman Sachs' Cayman Islands Deals, Investors Could Only Lose
McClatchy has obtained previously undisclosed documents that provide a closer look at the shadowy $1.3 trillion market since 2002 for complex offshore deals, which Chicago financial consultant and frequent Goldman critic Janet Tavakoli said at times met "every definition of a Ponzi scheme."
Where on earth are the WSJ and FT on this story?
Will they continue to be part of the problem or dare to find the spine to take on the risk of this kind of investigative reporting? MOVE YOUR MONEY
Watch film maker Eugene Jarecki's amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info to learn more about how easy it is to move your money.
And pass the idea on to your friends (help make this video -- and this idea -- go viral!). Source HuffPo. The Card Game U.S. Looks to Australia on Credit Card Fees
After a law forced a cut in transaction fees, some merchants and banks added new charges for customers that were, sometimes, higher than the old ones.
American merchants, like their counterparts Down Under, complain that the high fees they must pay credit card companies and banks to accept their cards force them to increase prices on everything they sell — even for people who pay with cash — to make up the difference.
In the United States, the Government Accountability Office last week issued a report showing that consumers who did not use credit cards “may be made worse off by paying higher prices for goods and services, as merchants pass on their increasing card acceptance costs to their customers.” Source NYT.com On Goldman Sachs, the FT, speed-reading and Caesar’s wife…
From an earlier letter to the editor Goldman's speed reading champion
From Mr Alan Morton. Sir, So Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chief executive and co-chairman of the panel of judges of the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs business book of the year award, said all 15 books on the list were "both compelling and enjoyable" A quick browse online informs me these books total 5,292 pages…it would take approximately 264 hours to plough one's way through this list. Mr Blankfein would therefore have had to commit 6.5 hours per day since the list was published on August 7 to complete the exercise.
While the FT’s laudatory Person of the Year piece on Blankfein points to his prodigious reading appetite; the letter writer totally misses a much larger point:The FT/Goldman Sachs Book awards involve an exchange of lucre (a.k.a. “Sponsorship”) and this runs the risk of a repeat of The Bona Dea ScandalBlankfein may be the ‘master of risk’ but the FT would do well to appoint an independent risk assessor.
Needless to say, it was Caesar’s third wife Calpurnia who had the dream of his imminent death just before the fateful Ides of March. Nightmare PR headaches in Q1 for both FT and Goldman perhaps? Comments from HuffPo: Goldman Sachs CEO Named 'Person Of The Year' By Financial Times
Fake Christmas cards from Goldman Sachs
"He knows if you've been bad or good...We get paid in either case. Happy Holidays from Lloyd and staff." So goes a fake Christmas card that has been making the rounds via email on Wall Street, reports the New York Post. The card also depicts Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein as Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame.
There's no telling who is behind the effort, which I doubt has gone completely viral. As pranks go, this one is pretty tame; I do not think the card contains any viruses or anything. But it does point to the firm's image problems that will likely be in the news again as bonus seasons rolls around.
From Jim Kim on FierceFinance.com For more:- here's the article Toxic Swaps Approved By Larry Summers Cost Harvard Almost $1 Billion
The swaps, which assumed that interest rates would rise, proved so toxic that the 373-year-old institution agreed to pay banks a total of almost $1 billion to terminate them.
Most of the wrong-way bets were made in 2004, when Lawrence Summers, now President Barack Obama’s economic adviser, led the university.
Cranes were recently removed from the construction site of a $1 billion science center that was to be the expansion’s centerpiece, a reminder of Summers’s ambition. The school said last week they would suspend work on the building early next year.
Beware of this fox and his genius advice now running the national economic hen-house... The real costs of war:
Working paper: Mental Health in the Aftermath of Conflict
Wars are detrimental to the populations and the economy of affected countries. Over and above the human cost caused by deaths and suffering during a time of conflict, survivors of conflict are often left in poor economic circumstances and mental-health distress even after the conflict ends.
How large are these costs?
How long does it take for conflict-affected populations to recover from the mental stress of conflict?
What policies are appropriate to assist mental health recovery?
While considerable attention has been paid to post-war policies with regard to recovery in physical and human capital, mental health has received relatively less attention.
The World Bank's Quy-Toan Do and Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Iyer review the nascent literature on mental health in the aftermath of conflict, discuss the potential mechanisms through which conflict might affect mental health, and illustrate the findings from their study of mental health in a specific post-conflict setting: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Download the PDF. Drug money 'saved banks from crisis'
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the London Observer newspaper.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi: How Obama Sold Out America
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but... So You Want to Live to 100? More of Us Will, and Here Is What Life Might Look Like
The implications are enormous for everything from retirement planning and health care costs to new models for the workplace and innovative approaches to education. As one Wharton professor says: "This is a demographic revolution the likes of which we have never seen before on earth." What challenges will individuals, organizations and governments confront due to increases in life expectancy that show no signs of slowing down? Paul Volcker stuns the financial community by saying they are worthless sacks of crap who have contributed fark-all to society and the world economy. Where's his Nobel Prize? (telegraph.co.uk) Source: Fark.com Too Big to Exist Source: Carnegie Council Policy Innovations Don’t always look on the Bright Side of Life, here’s why
Speaking to In These Times about her new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich offers some reasons to think twice about the origins and virtue of optimism. Optimism became a prevailing cultural phenomenon as job security began to change (and in many cases vanish) in the 1980s, she explains.
“If you want to have a compliant populace, what could be better than to say that everyone has to think positively and accept that anything that goes wrong in their lives is their own fault because they haven’t had a positive enough attitude?”
Source: In These Times Is there room for altruism and compassion in our economic system?
On April 9 - 11, 2010, at the Kongresshaus Zürich, economic leaders and leading minds in neuroscience, applied economics, philosophy, contemplative science and anthropology will discuss moral and ethical dimensions of our economic system.
The ongoing global financial crisis clearly shows how vulnerable economic systems are to human behavior, particularly to corruption and greed. This conference focuses on the question: can we develop economic systems which deliver prosperity and welfare, while at the same time reward altruism and compassion?
Speakers include:
Questions include:
The Mind and Life XX conference offers a unique opportunity to follow a high-level interdisciplinary exchange between scientists and economists.
The whole dialogue will be held in English. Please find attendance and registration details on our homepage: www.compassionineconomics.org China eyes industrial bases in Africa
Lower-value manufacturing facilities could be moved out of China to developing countries.
The World Bank and Beijing are in discussions about setting up low-cost factories in new industrial zones in Africa to help the continent develop a manufacturing base and reverse its declining share in global trade.
Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, said Beijing had shown “strong interest” in proposals to set up manufacturing bases to help African countries achieve high growth paths similar to Asian ones. From FT.com Goldman Sachs bankers, to arms!
Granted, Goldman Sachs has endured some public abuse as of late, but has it come to the point that Goldman Sachs bankers need to arm themselves? A Bloomberg column finds that "senior Goldman people" are buying guns to protect themselves. The New York Police Department told the columnist that it "believes some of the bankers" inquired about do indeed already have pistol permits. The NYPD said it will be a while before it can name names.
I'm not sure what to make of this. There have been a few protests at regional offices of Goldman Sachs and at the actual homes of a few AIG executives. But these staged "events" tend to be done more for the media than out of malice, but there may be things we do not know. I wouldn't be surprised if the company hasn't fielded some threats, but I would be surprised if any were credible. In any case, the company can take no chances. It needs to protect its employees. I just wonder whether nervous bankers packing heat will make anyone really safer. You might be tempted to say that adding guns to this mix may do more harm than good. By Jim Kim at FierceFinance.com
For more: Rotarians are bringing safe drinking water and sanitation to millions around the world. A new press kit describes these efforts. The High Rise Urban Farms of the Future
Moving Farms off land and into skyscrapers is on the verge of becoming reality. The main hurdle isn't technology; it's one of engineering and funding. Happy Thanksgiving from us and thanks to Globe.net
Cisco and The Economist Discuss the Social and Economic Impact of CSR
A Video Conference -- using Cisco Systems’ technology, naturally -- connecting the CEO in San Jose, California with knowledgeable, but clearly beholden journalists in London, England. Is U.S. Immigration Policy Ruining Us Economically?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Stanford President John Hennessy blasted the U.S. immigration policy that forces foreign students to return to their home country after being educated in the United States. From Stanford video... Goldman Sachs Doing "God's Work"?
By Charles Gasparino, Author, The Sellout
The only thing worse than Goldman Sachs amassing billions in bonus money for its executives, based on various government subsidies and bailout measures, is listening to it try to explain it all away. From HuffPo The Sheriff's Posse: The People Behind the Regulations
Gene Sperling was paid by Goldman Sachs and for speeches made at various financial institutions, and Mariner Investment Group, a New York City hedge fund, paid Lee Sachs.
The trouble of course arises from the fact that both counselors, along with the rest of Geithner's inner circle, are responsible for managing the $700 billion in government funds allotted for the financial rescue plan, most of which has been spent bailing out troubled investment banks. Read the report... at FierceFinance Will the new Pay Czar ride to the rescue? 10 States Hurtling Towards Bankruptcy
California was only the beginning.
Nine more states are "barreling toward an economic disaster" according to a new Pew poll that sees deep service cuts and temporary tax hikes to avoid fiscal calamity. Some of these states will be familiar to Atlantic Business readers. I've been leading the funeral cry for the united states of MichiCaliFlAriVada (that's Michigan, California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada), and all five states are on Pew's list. Rounding out the ten are Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
read more at atlantic business Labels reveal companies' social responsibility From Soup to ... Corporate Social Responsibility: Campbell's Efforts to Lead the Way The Unreasonable Institute has officially begun its search for the world's 25 most driven, most brilliant, high-impact social entrepreneurs. The Institute is looking for social entrepreneurs, between ages 20-30, who will develop social ventures that history may one day recall defined progress in the 21st century - ventures with the ability to measurably improve the lives of millions of people around the globe.
The Unreasonable Institute exists for no other purpose than to find these young social entrepreneurs and give them everything they need to create this kind of impact. Be afraid -- be very afraid! -Ed
Monster bubble
By Nouriel Roubini in the FT
Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets – equities, oil, energy and commodity prices – a narrowing of high-yield and high-grade credit spreads, and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply, while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable. Lippo Group CEO James Riady: 'Money and Power Are a Blessing and a Curse' Human capital: the challenges facing Asia
While the economic downturn is a key focus for many C-level executives, the need to attract and retain talent remains an important issue, says INSEAD Professor Narayan Pant. This is all the more so in Asia where developing countries such as China and India are helping to drive the world's economic recovery. Goldman seeks help from Bridgespan
Having posted record profits in the third quarter, and setting aside a compensation pool of $16.7 billion for employees so far this year, Goldman Sachs is working with philanthropy-consulting group Bridgespan to determine how to use charity to mitigate public backlash against perceived greed, Bloomberg News reported Oct. 15 (see Goldman Sachs story).
Soros calls Wall St profits ‘gifts’ from state
The big profits made by some of Wall Street’s leading banks are “hidden gifts” from the state, and taxpayer resentment of such companies is “justified”, George Soros, the fund manager, said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Great idea for interactive online debates from the Economist
A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive. One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.
When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won’t be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. By BONO Op-Ed in the NYT
The tycoon who puts his money where his mouth is
From humble beginnings in Sudan as the son of a clerk, Mo Ibrahim has had quite a journey. Now worth over $2.5bn (£1.5bn), the entrepreneur and philanthropist is changing lives across Africa by using his money and influence to encourage clean politics. BBC Feature. The free market is not up to the job of creating work
The US may be looking at long-term, double-digit unemployment.
Only massive programs are equal to the challenge of restoring stable growth to our economy, writes Mort Zuckerman in the FT NOT SMART: Harvard Bet on Interest-Rate Swaps Backfires, Costing School $500 Million
Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the world’s richest school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired.
Harvard paid $497.6 million to investment banks during the fiscal year ended June 30 to get out of $1.1 billion of interest-rate swaps intended to hedge variable-rate debt for capital projects, the school’s annual report said. The university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said it also agreed to pay $425 million over 30 to 40 years to offset an additional $764 million in swaps. Bloomberg. Laptop for every pupil in Uruguay
Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school. President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October. From the BBC
MUCH of the recent anger over bank bonuses has been focused on Goldman Sachs, which, according to results just published, accumulated a further $5.4 billion for its staff in the most recent quarter. Yet the one thing that can be said about Goldman is that if its employees are making hay partly on the back of an implicit public guarantee, so are shareholders. In the same quarter the bank generated an annualized return on equity of 21%.
Not so for some of America’s other banks. There, the owners (and in theory the controllers) of the firms seem to have been forgotten, even though pay remains relatively high. About the only consistent beneficiaries of the new boom are employees. The Economist Full article Goldman Mounts Charm Offensive
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will announce that life is pretty much back to normal: billions of dollars in quarterly profit and record pay set aside for employees at the firm known for running circles around the rest of Wall Street.
Hoping to defuse a politically combustible situation, Goldman officials have been mounting a soft-sell campaign that pushes the usually reticent company into the spotlight. From WSJ.com
So much for conserving cash. After axing around 195,700 jobs during the global financial crisis, big Wall Street banks are jump-starting hiring again. Full Article The illusion of control: dancing with chance
Looking back, it may seem obvious that there was insufficient risk management in the financial industry. In a new book called 'Dance with chance, making luck work for you' authors Spyros Makridakis, Robin Hogarth and Anil Gaba suggest that while there are events that you can't anticipate, there are better ways of dealing with risk. INSEAD Knowledge Read More...
Green Running through its Veins Novo Nordisk, a global diabetes and biopharmaceutical company makes sustainability its lifeblood-and grows big… China's Green-Tech Market: $1 Trillion By 2013
A new report says China's green-tech market could reach $1 trillion by 2013
China Greentech Initiative: "China’s market requirements for greentech solutions are tremendous. Chinese government policies are positive drivers for greentech market development and a wide range of businesses are beginning to deploy greentech solutions to address a broad spectrum of environmental issues. While significant challenges remain, stakeholders have clear opportunities to accelerate market development and create a more environmentally sustainable China" A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll finds that two-thirds of Iranians would favor their government precluding the development of nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against Iran. Can Nike and Wal-Mart really save the Amazon?
An ambitious commitment by some of the world's largest companies not to buy beef or leather products from the Brazilian Amazon may falter if a strong monitoring system isn't put in place. From: CSMonitor.com Green Alchemy: Turning Waste Plastic to Black Gold
The Envion Oil Generator (EOG) is a first-of-its-kind technology that converts any type of plastic waste into high quality, synthetic light medium oil for less than $10 per barrel.
Envion’s innovative approach provides a comprehensive solution that has the potential to remove plastic waste from landfills, freeing up the estimated 24% of capacity that plastic occupies in landfills. The United States produces approximately 50 million tons of plastic waste per year, the vast majority of which ends up taking up space in landfills. From Globe-Net.com US foundations developing ESG emerging markets fund
A group of US charitable foundations are developing an environmental, social and governance-focused emerging markets equity fund with the aid of consulting firm Cambridge Associates. by Daniel Brooksbank | Responsible Investor. Jobs site focuses on reviewing 'great bosses' leave bosses," GetaGreatBoss facilitates reviews of managers by From Springwise.com Global investors call for binding climate policy
Banks, pension funds and other investment groups representing more than $13 trillion in assets called for a strong global agreement on climate policy on Wednesday, saying it would lead to a flood of investment into the low-carbon economy.
"Without the policies to encourage clean energy, investors are stuck at the starting gates," Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmentalists, and the director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk.
More than 180 investor groups called for a global target of emissions reductions of 50 to 85 percent by 2050, including higher cuts by wealthy countries, and plans in developing countries to make measurable emissions reductions. From Reuters’ - - Companies reinvent giving for ‘new era’ -Philanthropy Journal online- Nine Investor Law Firms Support SEC Efforts to Ensure Shareowner Rights Source: Social Funds Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution
A Nobel Peace Prize winner, he developed high-yielding crop varieties that helped to avert famines worldwide. Loss Creates Leaders. I made that the title of the first chapter in my new book because I believe it's the most important lesson for anyone who aspires to leadership in business or elsewhere in life.
What is small, French and green? President Nicolas Sarkozy, who proposed on Thursday September 10th a tax on carbon-emitting sources of fuel. If it goes ahead, 17 euros ($25) will be levied, initially, per tonne of carbon dioxide. Although France would not be the first country with a general carbon tax—Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway already have them—it would be the largest economy yet. North America's Largest International Event on the Business of the Environment
Over the past 20 years, the GLOBE Series has grown to become one the world's most influential international events on the business of the environment. Every two years, GLOBE™ brings together leaders of government and industry to discuss current sustainable business trends and to showcase innovative solutions to the world's environmental problems.
GLOBE 2010 March 24-26, 2010 Vancouver, Canada www.globe2010.com Dow Jones sustainability indices see re-shuffle of best performing companies
On 3 September 2009, the results of the 2009 annual review for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World) and Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability Index were announced by Zurich-based SAM, an investment boutique focused on sustainable investing. In their assessment of corporate sustainability leadership over the previous year, SAM announced that 33 companies will join the DJSI, and 33 will be deleted from the 317 component index. New additions to DJSI include companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola, Samsung Electronics and Bank of Nova Scotia. Some of the deletions include National Grid, Mitsubishi Estate, SABMiller and BAE Systems. Record-Breaking Numbers of Resolutions and Engagements on Climate Change are Recorded in 2009 Proxy Season U.S. Increases Its Share of Worldwide Arms Market
More than two-thirds of all foreign armament deals last year were made with U.S. suppliers, at a value of more than $37 billion, a Congressional study found.
The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.
Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons agreements in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.
By Thom Shanker New York Times Bailed-out bankers to get options windfall: study
As shares of bailed-out banks bottomed out earlier this year, stock options were awarded to their top executives, setting them up for millions of dollars in profit as prices rebounded, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million, the report by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies said.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Bailedout-bankers-to-get-rb-728839500.html?x=0&.v=1
Consumers and employees have made a strong business case for firms to adopt sustainability The concept of sustainability came on to the corporate agenda via the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (more commonly known as the Brundtland Commission after the name of its chairman, Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister). The commission, set up in 1983 to address growing concern about “the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources, and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development”, introduced the idea of sustainable development, which it famously defined as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
See also: John Elkington Revisiting my triple bottom line, http://bit.ly/Vr4guBanzai! A landslide victory for the DPJ in Japan
The victors have an emotive name for it: seiken kotai, or regime change. It came in brutal fashion on Sunday August 30th when Japan, Asia’s richest democracy, dumped the party that has ruled it for almost all of the last 53 years and gave a huge win to one that until recently had little idea of how it would govern. The global agricultural sector –
including both ranching and farming - faces enormous challenges in meeting the 21st century's growing demand for food, fiber and fuel without eroding the natural resources and ecological systems upon which agriculture and humanity depend. Climate change is one of these challenges, as it has the potential to significantly disrupt food production across the globe and undermine small-holder farmer livelihoods. Hilarious YouTube spot on Goldman Sachs
Now this is funny. Comedian Matt Rittberg offers a frankly hilarious "Goldfellas" spoof based on Goldman Sachs' compensation and bailout controversy. In this version, Lloyd Blankfein is the top dog of a criminal enterprise known as Goldman Sachs. The meat of the spoof features the Blankfein character going all Robert DeNiro on some managing directors who've been flashing their money around in the wake of Goldman's big heist.
"What are you stupid? What is the matter with you? What did you say? You being a wise guy? What did I tell you? Don't buy anything. Don't get anything. Nothing big. We just stole billions. Are you stupid? One guy comes in with a Mercedes, this guy comes in with a mink?" And the kicker: "Didn't anyone read my memo? What are you stupid?" UK FSA chair slams City of London’s ‘socially useless’ excesses, floats Tobin tax
Lord Turner, the UK’s top financial regulator has lambasted some of the City of London’s banking and finance activities as ‘socially useless’ and suggested that a version of the controversial Tobin tax idea could be used to reign in its excesses. In an interview with Prospect magazine in the UK, Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, said the City had become “swollen” after a decade of excess to “beyond a socially reasonable size”. SuperCorp: Values as Guidance System
In her new book SuperCorp, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter details how vanguard companies such as IBM, Cemex, and Omron are rewriting the nature of the business enterprise and how firms will gain sustainable prosperity in the 21st century.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a Yale trained sociologist and not a financial engineer dreaming up the next algorithm…
To read an excerpt: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6267.html is A Lehman Brothers movie to air The British Broadcasting Corporation will air a made-for-television movie that dramatizes the fall of Lehman Brothers. "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers" will focus on CEO Richard Fuld and this 11th hour moves to save the historic firm. Hopefully, it will air in the United States as well. I can't wait for the scene in which Erin Callan gets canned. I'm wondering whether we'll ever get a definitive novel or nonfiction effort that really nails this period in Wall Street history. One could point to novels like "The Bonfire of the Vanities," "Barbarians at the Gate," "Liar's Poke" and even some of those John Brooks classics, such as "Once in Golconda," as having really nailed previous eras of excess. I'm sure lots of journalists are working on this. For more: Does Health Care Have an Electronic Future? Public attitudes vary greatly about global warming
Russia, China, Canada and the United States are countries where global warming is not considered a serious problem according to a new survey
Mining The Sea Of PlasticScientists sail off to study plastic trash in the Pacific and ways of recovering it. Despite being about the size of France, the plastic garbage patch isn’t well understood. Located northwest of Hawaii, the gyre is not crossed by shipping routes. Cruise ships don’t go there, and sailors avoid it because it’s not windy. Moving Toward Cosmopolitan BrandsFor a really good article on cosmopolitanism and how Noah Bopp, the director of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership teaches his students how global interconnectedness and choice determine brand ethics by using a Hershey's Kiss as an example, please visit Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism by Policy Innovations, an online publication of the Carnegie Council
Brands like the U.S.'s Patagonia, Sun Chips, Ethos Water, Newman's Own, Ben & Jerry's, as well as the U.K.'s Ethletic Sneaker, Ireland's Edun, France's Sur Le Dos Des Filles, and Korea's Beautiful Store and Natural Dream, a growing number around the world are beginning to move in this direction. These brands are making very conscious and considered choices about their impact on humanity. They are building into their brand DNA a code of ethics that is next generation and humanitarian focused. It is a long-sighted view. Given the urgency of global warming, issues of poverty, human rights, and confluence of other factors facing our global human society, planning only in the short term is rapidly becoming yesterday's model. Excerpted from Patt Cottingham’s ‘Hello/Goodbye’ series on Huffington PostGreen Car Purchases Soar as Older Gas Guzzlers are RetiredUS Consumers Respond in record numbers to Cash for Clunkers Program Top 10 vehicles traded in under U.S. "Cash for Clunkers" program: 1. Ford Explorer (1998) 2. Ford Explorer (1997) 3. Ford Explorer (1996) 4. Ford Explorer (1999) 5. Jeep Grand Cherokee 6. Jeep Cherokee 7. Ford Explorer (1995) 8. Ford Explorer (1994) 9. Ford Windstar (1998) 10. Dodge Caravan (1999)
Top 10 vehicles purchased under the program: 1. Ford Focus 2. Honda Civic 3. Toyota Corolla 4. Toyota Prius 5. Ford Escape 6. Toyota Camry 7. Dodge Caliber 8. Hyundai Elantra 9. Honda Fit 10.Chevrolet Cobalt
Banks make $38bn from overdraft fees Poorer consumers are worst affected
US banks stand to collect a record $38.5bn in fees for customer overdrafts this year, with the bulk of the revenue coming from the most financially stretched consumers amid the deepest recession since the 1930s, according to research. The fees are nearly double those reported in 2000.
The finding is likely to increase public hostility towards the financial sector, which has been under political pressure to ease the burden on consumers by increasing credit availability and lending more fairly after being bailed out by taxpayers. By Jonathan Salem Baskin Interesting book review in the Economist
“Branding doesn't work any more...You need another branding solution like you need a hole in the head.” Considering that he makes his living as a branding consultant, Jonathan Salem Baskin is a brave man. In his iconoclasm, he reminds of a routine by Rich Hall, in which the American comedian questions why Coca-Cola is willing to spend millions on brand advertising, only for diners in a restaurant to reply “Whatever” when the waiter asks “Is Pepsi OK?” Economist Paul Romer unveiling his bold plan for helping failed states by creating "charter cities," special zones governed by partner nations.
How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?) A TED Global 2009 Video. Shrinking giants
The market capitalization of PetroChina may have fallen by almost half in the past year, but it remains the world’s most valuable publicly listed company. Chinese firms now occupy three of the top four slots. The Economist’s Full article Corporate Social Responsibility in a Downturn
As a marketing scholar Kash Rangan is optimistic about strategic CSR efforts that provide value in communities and society. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6179.html The barbarians are coming, again
Along with the rest of the finance industry, the private-equity business has endured a miserable couple of years. Congress continues to plan heavier taxation of its profits, even though they have slumped. As banks, which had been lending buy-out firms spectacular sums of money on extraordinarily generous terms, abruptly turned off their taps, buy-outs became a rarity. In the first half of 2009, just $24 billion of private-equity deals were completed worldwide and only three loans were extended to fund leveraged acquisitions, the lowest number since 1985, according to Dealogic. That compares with deal volumes of $131 billion last year and $528 billion in 2007. Full article from the Economist Only local business can end global poverty Glenn Hubbard on aid programs that work -
This week the United Nations reported that the recession has created a $4.8bn shortfall in its 2009 aid programs – more than half the $9.5bn it seeks.
“The global financial crisis is clearly a software problem. That is what everyone is trying to fix for the prosperous countries of the world. Poverty is also a software problem, but the aid system has been trying to fix the hardware instead, and got the software wrong. The Marshall plan got it right for postwar Europe. It is not too late to correct the error and get it right for the poorest countries.”
The writer is dean of Columbia Business School. His new book, The Aid Trap, is out soon. Study finds a correlation between social media engagement and financial success.
A new study ranking brands based on their level of online engagement has named Starbucks the savviest brand when it comes to using social media. (AIG is listed at #99, but it is not at all clear why they were included in the survey.)
The coffee-maker comes in ahead of Dell and eBay, which placed second and third, according to a study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group. Li's study sought to find which brands best leveraged social media to interact with their customers, and judged the brands on their levels of interaction across 10 social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and discussion forums. What went wrong with economics And how the discipline should change to avoid the mistakes of the past.
After pulling a 180 degree turn on their condemnation of ‘insidious CSR’ a couple of years ago, The Economist now thinks it is time to question their hard line orthodox stance on the dismal science, finally:
“OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself.” leader A $10 billion Saudi fraud claim
Debt is capitalism's dirty little secret
Just why is there so much debt in the Anglo-Saxon world? Bankers and regulators know well that it is in nobody's long-term interests to have allowed borrowing to escalate to a position where the US now owes far more, as a multiple of the economy, than at the start of the Great Depression. The answer is capitalism's dirty little secret: excessive lending was the only way to maintain the living standards of the vast bulk of the population at a time when wealth was being concentrated in the hands of an elite. FT 6/30/09
Obama Rockets to Top of Poll on Global Leaders
US President Barack Obama has the confidence of many publics around the world - inspiring far more confidence than any other world political leader according to a new poll of 20 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org.
A year ago, President Bush was one of the least trusted leaders in the world.
Putin and Ahmadinejad Receive Lowest Marks
Country-by-Country Summaries (PDF)
FT points out that: Two of the biggest bourses in Asia and Latin America have for the first time overtaken rivals in New York and London by market capitalization in a sign of how the economic crisis and tough competition in mature markets is reshaping the global exchange landscape. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) and Brazil's BM&F Bovespa have vaulted ahead of NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX and the London Stock Exchange in the value of shares in the exchange companies themselves. The Brazilian exchange will open a London office HKEx is now the world's second-largest exchange by market value, behind CME Group, the largest US futures exchange. BM&F Bovespa is in fourth place, after Deutsche Börse, the German exchange. The London Stock Exchange has slipped to 11th place
The current composition of the index is shown in this table: Sources: http://www.exchange-handbook.co.uk/index.cfm?section=mvindex
UNICEF awarded $250,000 by Not On Our Watch Not On Our Watch was founded by George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Jerry Weintraub, and David Pressman to focus global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities. Drawing upon the voices of cultural leaders, its mission is to protect and assist the vulnerable, marginalized, and displaced. See the video of Matt Damon on the ground at the Zimbabwe border here: http://www.notonourwatchproject.org/ Beyond Profit – a new Social Enterprise Magazine "Despite the fact that the world economy and its media hierarchy seem to be crumbling, against all odds we'd like to welcome you to the launch of a new magazine, the start of a new social business! Why, you ask? Why start a new business-a new publication, no less-now? We believe that our world could use more good news: Companies doing right. People who put community above self. Investors that look beyond a quick financial return. We believe that people and businesses that are looking beyond profit-at their impact on society, and their ability to change systems, processes and communities-are worth knowing about." Says Managing Editor, Lindsay Clinton in her introductory letter. We agree whole heartedly and wish this new magazine and web site all success. Free subscriptions offered to all who sign up before June 1st, so hurry over to: Is the Fate of the American Newspaper Industry in the Hands of the Government? The news about the newspaper business is bad. Circulation is sliding. Revenue is plummeting. Papers are closing. Layoffs abound. Amid the chaos, far too many in the industry are paralyzed by fear. Their idea of innovation is a token, tentative project here or there. Or a foolhardy call to charge for content nobody will pay for. Mostly, they're cutting to—and past—the bone, chasing harebrained schemes, and generally praying that some miracle will happen, that the hundred-year-floodwaters will recede, the skies will brighten, and somehow the newspaper industry will be saved. What's Next for the Big Financial Brands? Some of the great financial brands such as Merrill Lynch built trust with customers over decades-but lost it in a matter of months. Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch explains where they went wrong, and what comes next. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6174.html Attached at the Wallet: The Delicate Financial Relationship between the U.S. and China. The financial relationship between China and the U.S. is beginning to look like an unhealthy co-dependency. China holds so much of its foreign reserves in dollar-based assets that it is now vulnerable to shifts in the U.S. economy. And the U.S. has allowed China to purchase so much of its debt that it is now beholden to Chinese interests. Experts disagree, however, about the real motives for China's continuing investments, and whether it would ever sell them off. -- a comprehensive online resource for the latest news, reports, and congressional hearings related to the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. The site is constantly updated with the never-ending stream of information about TARP and its troubles, including:
All postings have been categorized and are searchable by corporation, oversight body, or congressional committee.TARPtales.org also features descriptions of and links to the myriad TARP oversight bodies and independent watchdogs that are monitoring the government's spending of bailout funds, as well as a detailed timeline of TARP-related events and developments Twitter: a new weapon in the fight against malaria? Indeed it is and the U.N. Foundation is in the thick of it right now with their Nothing But Nets campaign and their Chairman, Ted Turner, all in 140 characters or less! Last week, actor Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN and Ted Turner to see who could be the first to reach one million Twitter followers and Ashton won. He has already come through on his promise to donate 10,000 anti-malaria bed nets and now Ted has come through with a challenge of his own. Watch the video! Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home, Forever Brazilian-Japanese workers who have lost their jobs are being offered money to return to their home countries. In the NYT: Get outta here….. Slide Show: A Cash Offer to Leave Japan Misgovernance at the World Bank Board members may be inclined to advance their own interests at voting time. This appears true for the World Bank's Board of Executive Directors, too. The problem? Many countries are being shut out of development funding. New research by Harvard Law School student Ashwin Kaja and HBS professor Eric Werker tells why misgovernance at the World Bank should be corrected. Q&A with Eric Werker: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6151.html The Americas and Washington: an era ends , Ivan Briscoe Excellent article from Open Democracy; now that American exceptionalism is in serious doubt, it looks like the Monroe Doctrine may be history: Two leading insiders - Thomas A Shannon, the highest serving state-department authority on Latin America, and Jeffrey Davidow, a White House adviser - have spoken of the summit as a therapeutic exercise in listening and learning; while vice-president Joe Biden has declared the "era in which we gave orders" to be over (see Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, "Washington and Latin America: farewell, Monroe") Redefining Value in a New Economy Green is up. Trust is down. BBMG’s new Conscious Consumer Report offers marketers a robust look at the issues, attributes and certifications driving awareness and intent to purchase among shoppers looking to purchase with a purpose. The BBMG study includes data on more than 100 attitudinal and behavioral dimensions, video clips from in-depth ethnographic interviews, a detailed consumer segmentation analysis and concrete takeaways on how marketers can use the insights in the report to drive innovation, growth and success. For highlights see their News and Insights page. In his new book, Viral Spiral, David Bollier, whose work centers on ways to reclaim common assets for public benefit, documents the rise of a "free culture" movement dedicated to creating a digital republic committed to freedom and innovation. The term "viral spiral" describes the process by which members of the Internet community - techies, lawyers, artists, musicians, scientists, businesspeople, and innovators - come together to build open-source software and other freely available common tools, to the despair of media conglomerates. Solar-powered cooker wins climate contest A solar-powered cardboard cooker has been announced the winner of a $75,000 competition to tackle climate change. The Kyoto Box uses the sun's rays to cook food and boil water. It is targeted at the 3bn people who use firewood. The box costs just $5 to make and will be given away free. Jon Bohmer, the cooker's inventor, said: "It's a great feeling. The prize is just what's needed to get this project off the ground. There's only so much I can do on my own." The Economist to cover the other half of the world’s people! Check out their rationale for under the Banyan tree: Introducing our new Asia column Clean tech Investment Drops in First Quarter Worldwide investment in clean technology suffered a steep decline in the first quarter of 2009 hitting record lows in some sectors. Going Green: Why Germany Has the Inside Track to Lead a New Industrial Revolution Already a leading player in so-called clean technology -- the mix of environmentally benign power generation and environmentally friendly technologies -- Germany may become the epicenter of the world's next industrial revolution: the triumph of clean, cheap, sustainable electricity. Why mainstreaming corporate social responsibility still makes good business sense With the recession in full swing and no reprieve in sight, one might expect interest in corporate social responsibility to wane, or perhaps even die a natural death. Not so, according to Craig Smith, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Ethics and Social Responsibility. He believes that corporate responsibility has never been more prominent on the corporate agenda. The video is well worth viewing in terms of what the Business Schools have and have not contributed to the current financial engineering mess.... http://knowledge.insead.edu/MainstreamingCRmakesgoodsense090119.cfm?vid=174 Innovest bought by RiskMetrics A Responsible Investor scoop Sustainable Corporations Outperform During Economic Crisis Study finds that companies with commitment to sustainability have outperformed others by an average of $650 million in market capitalization. Source SocialFunds.com. Billions in Nonprofit projects held up by credit crisis Johns Hopkins researchers estimate $166 billion in infrastructure projects delayed nationwide. Nonprofits always struggle to generate investment capital due to their nonprofit status and their inability to access the equity markets, but the survey results show that the recession has compounded their woes: The 1,837 organizations surveyed identified 1,065 shovel-ready projects stalled by the inability to secure financing. A state-by-state listing of these projects is at http://www.jhu.edu/listeningpost/news “Thanks to this eye-opening data, we now know about existing significant opportunities not just to stimulate employment but also to improve the social infrastructure of our communities,” said Tim Delaney, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. “Let’s make sure nonprofit infrastructure projects are given as much consideration as roads, public buildings, and businesses in the uses made of economic recovery and bank bail-out funds.” The full text of the report “’Shovel-Ready’ but Stalled: Nonprofit Infrastructure Projects Ready for Economic Recovery Support,” complete with state-by-state estimates, is available online at http://www.jhu.edu/listeningpost/news AT&T Text Messaging Campaign to Benefit Hungry Kids Barack Obama pledged to end childhood hunger by 2015 during his presidential campaign. He also called for a national day of service on January 19, Martin Luther King Day. In response, AT&T has introduced Operation No Kid Hungry, a campaign to raise funds to help end childhood hunger and encourage Americans to hold food drives. Read more. Source: Boston College Wal-Mart Canada Opens First Environmental Demonstration Store New high-efficiency model to test innovative geothermal and daylight harvesting technology among other sustainable features. More... Globe.net Wal-Mart Stores spends over $40 million in digital-advertising And now the world's largest retailer plans a significant push into social media. See the full story in Ad Age: US Army issues its first Sustainability Report: Sustainability Report 2007: Sustain the Mission, Secure the Future The New York Times is on the verge of going out of business. This is a business with a great and beloved product. And while the economy is indeed tanking, failure of newspapers is not about macroeconomic issues. The Times' issues are specific to the newspaper industry. The problem is that while The New York Times still has a healthy readership, their readers are moving to the web version of the paper, where newspapers currently can't make money. From blogger Hank Wiliams of http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/ Bail-outs are not new and there are plenty of examples of successful and unsuccessful bail-outs, both inside and outside the financial sector. Many offer parallels with the current situation. This view from the BBC for some reason does not include Chrysler but there are interesting historical examples. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions could profoundly affect the valuations of many companies, but executives don’t seem to be paying attention. From the McKinsey Quarterly-Log-in required Achieving a Sustainable Global Economy Mindy Luber, President of Ceres - Advancing Sustainable Prosperity recommends these very clear and concrete actions to the new Obama administration:
The New President and Philanthropy The election of Barack Obama could bring about changes for nonprofit organizations and the people they serve. Learn what President-elect Obama thinks on issues of importance to the nonprofit world - The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Campaign 2008 Website ‘Once in a lifetime' opportunity to buy green stocks A shift towards an economy based on renewable energy could be one of the only ways to stimulate growth and avoid a prolonged global economic downturn, according to Adam Seitchik, chief investment officer at Trillium Asset Management, the Boston-based SRI fund manager. Also see Responsible Investor's SRI in the Rockies: round-up Starbucks Joins (RED)TM to Help Save Lives in Africa "(RED) is coming to a corner near you thanks to Starbucks. I'm very excited to be able to say that," said Bono, co-founder of (RED). "The business of Starbucks with roots in Africa and branches all over the world is an ideal fit for (RED). It's pretty mind-blowing to think that millions of people can buy (RED) going about their daily lives and in doing so raise millions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa. That's not a bad hit from your caffeine." But it is just a nickel--for some reason--Starbucks can't spare a dime Starting on November 27, 2008 and continuing through January 2, 2009, Starbucks will contribute five cents from the sale of any (STARBUCKS) RED EXCLUSIVE beverage* at all company-owned and licensed stores in the United States and Canada to the Global Fund to invest in AIDS programs in Africa. Wall Street ‘made rod for own back' FT: New bankruptcy rules seen spurring bank failures. Wall Street unwittingly created one of the catalysts for the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and American International Group by backing new bankruptcy rules that were aimed at insulating banks from the failure of a big client, lawyers and bankers say.The 2005 changes made clear that certain derivatives and financial transactions were exempt from provisions in the bankruptcy code that freeze a failed company's assets until a court decides how to apportion them among creditors.The new rules were intended to insulate financial companies from the collapse of a large counterparty, such as a hedge fund, by making it easier for them to unwind trades and retrieve collateral. Founded by inventor Dr. Arjen Hoekstra, Professor in Multidisciplinary Water Management, University of Twente in the Netherlands says: "It's interesting to see the growing interest from businesses in proper water management in their supply chain I really see forward to corporations recognizing that reduction of the corporation's water footprint should be part of its corporate social responsibility." Dr. Hoekstra will be presenting the keynote at the Corporate Water Footprinting conference on December 2-3 in San Francisco. Calvert Foundation Wins Award for Nonprofit Innovation. The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University honored Calvert Foundation Tuesday for exemplifying innovation in their many products and services. Calvert Foundation, the third-place winner, shares this honor with two other organizations striving to alleviate poverty. KickStart International, an organization that helps African entrepreneurs get their businesses started, received the first-place award. Second place was awarded to Hidden Harvest, an organization that employs low-income farm workers to salvage produce left behind by commercial buyers. This model provides fresh fruits and vegetables to distribution agencies in Coachella, CA. > Read the article from Market Watch The Aspen Center for Business Education has just made available online the highly acclaimed and widely used Giving Voice to Values (GVV) Curriculum Initiative. Doing Well - Very Well - by Doing Good Despite growing concerns about the global economic downturn, GE has affirmed that there is good money to be made in doing right by the environment. The company expects that revenues from its range of energy efficient and environmentally advantageous products and services will surge by 21% to over $17 billion in 2008. GE also predicts its annual investments in clean technology research and development will soon pass the $1.4 billion mark. Source:GLOBE-Net (October 24, 2008) - FTSE signs sustainability index venture with US provider KLD FTSE, the London-based index provider, has signed a deal with KLD Research & Analytics, the Boston-based US sustainability index group, under which the two groups will co-brand KLD's suite of ESG benchmarks. Investors suffer as US ethanol boom dries up The likes of Microsoft's Bill Gates are sitting on billions of dollars in losses after buying into the corn-based ethanol industry that George W.Bush embraced as the answer to US energy woes. See the Financial Times article. UN launches Green New Deal for sustainable investment The United Nations is backing a global Green New Deal, which it says could be a ‘historical' opportunity to rebuild economies debilitated by the credit crisis and target future investment for environmentally friendly markets. The initiative, launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is to receive $4m (€3.1m) in funding from the European Commission, Germany and Norway. But its impact could be felt far wider as it becomes a political catalyst at European and global talks for government and market-based investment into areas such as clean technology and renewable energy. Source: Responsible Investor. The national debt has surpassed $10 trillion, thereby exceeding the 13 digits on the National Debt Clock Some of the key facts and figures behind the turmoil in the global financial markets from the BBC. Wanted: a fairer capitalism, Will Hutton I never imagined I would live through events like those of the past three weeks. The western banking system faces disintegration. Economists and policy-makers are at loggerheads over how to intervene to stop the panic that is sweeping the world and inspire sufficient trust for the key money and credit markets to reopen.This is a crisis that has been thirty years in the making - a Gordian knot of libertarian free-market fundamentalism, unregulated globalisation, the collapse of social and... more » CECP Honors Co-Founder Paul Newman Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy-- September 29, 2008 - Paul Newman passed away on Friday, September 26, 2008. Nearly 10 years ago, Mr. Newman helped to found the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, a consortium of global CEOs in support of corporate giving. CONTACT: Lindsay Siegel US 'War on Terror' Has Not Weakened al Qaeda, Says Global Poll This indicates that the war may turn out to be an even worse investment than the ‘rescue package' for Wall Street.Source: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/ What the Financial Sector Meltdown Really Means for Nonprofits and Philanthropy. Rick Cohen of the Cohen Report addresses the tough times facing the nonprofit sector: "As the always-sharp Melissa Berman of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, nonprofits face a dual crisis -- the collapse of some major corporate givers and the timing of the collapse just before many nonprofits' core fundraising time at the end of the calendar year. The Economist in covering the Clinton Global Initiative this week described the impending problem succinctly: "the financial crisis means that there will be a greater need for philanthropy than ever -- both because existing foundations will see their assets fall, and because the huge cost of bailing out the financial system will mean that government has far less to spend on everything else." Poor prep for low carbon economy could slash sector values by 65 per cent Carbon Trust/McKinsey report says investors must now start discriminating against climate change laggards. Companies in the aluminium and automobile sectors could see up to 65% of their value wiped out in the coming years if they do not prepare for the transition to a low carbon economy, according to a report published today (Sept 22) by the Carbon Trust, an independent company set up by the UK government in response to the threat of climate change.>>>See full story by Hugh Wheelan of Responsible Investor What are The Eco-Patent Commons? The objectives of the Eco-Patent Commons are to facilitate the use of existing technologies to protect the environment, and encourage collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations. The initiative was launched by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in January 2008, to provide a unique opportunity for global business to make a difference - sharing innovation in support of sustainable development. Today, September 8, 2008, Xerox, DuPont and Bosch joined the Eco-Patent Commons. The newly-pledged patents include:
The pledged portfolio is available on a dedicated, public Web site hosted by the WBCSD (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc). The Value of Environmental Activists With decidedly non-profit goals leading them on, how do environmental protection groups such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund create value? Can it be measured? A Q&A with Harvard Business School professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and case writer Jordan Mitchell. 33 companies identified as new global Sustainability Leaders SAM, Dow Jones Indexes and STOXX Ltd. have just announced the results of Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes Review 2008 A webcast and further information about the new index constituents and the 19 super sector leaders is available at www.sustainability-indexes.com. For the complete press releases click here. The politics of sand, What constitutes sustainability? It'S official: extracting oil from Canada's vast deposits of bitumenous sand is unsustainable. So, at any rate, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) implicitly concluded when it ruled that Royal Dutch Shell was misleading the public by describing its tar-sands operation as "sustainable". WWF, the environmental NGO that lodged the complaint with the ASA, dislikes the tar sands (or oil sands, as Shell prefers to call them) because turning them into fuel consumes much more energy than refining crude oil does. If that energy is made by burning natural gas-as it is in all tar-sands projects at the moment-and so involves extra emissions of greenhouse gases, then the resulting fuel is two or three times as bad for the atmosphere as normal petrol or diesel. That is no good for the world's climate, and so, in WWF's view, unsustainable. Full article at Economist.com Environmentalism Sprouts Up on Corporate Boards Amid rising investor worries over global warming and shrinking natural resources, directors are keeping a closer watch on environmental issues. About 25% of Fortune 500 companies now have a board committee overseeing the environment, compared with fewer than 10% five years ago, estimates Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a national coalition of activists, investors and others concerned with the environment. Google.org invests in geothermal energy Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the search giant, has announced a $10.25 million investment in geothermal energy technology. The money will back two start-up companies that specialize in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), the process of pumping water underground to crack hot rocks and use the resulting steam to power a turbine and create electricity. The good people at Grist point to these resources:sources: Reuters, CNET News, Forbes, Google Inc., Earth2Tech Gilberto Gil: open minister, by Jose Murilo The resignation of Gilberto Gil as Brazil's minister of culture was announced on 30 July 2008. The great and influential musician says that music - and family matters - have after more than five years in the post called him back from his political responsibilities: "I feel like I have come full circle and I want to remove myself. I felt a big pressure on my artistic work that was accumulating." Some of openDemocracy's collection on Gilberto Gil and open culture is here... more» Rising Energy Costs May be Good News for 'Clean Tech' Firms -- and Their Investors The amount of venture capital invested in "clean tech" -- the raft of technologies that would create a greener economy -- nearly doubled from 2005 to 2006, reaching about $3 billion, according to a study conducted at the University of California at Berkeley. Figures like these have some analysts warning that clean tech is in the throes of a bubble, which could end just like the Internet and real estate booms did -- badly. Published: August 06, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton More financial advisors hiring psychologists Wachovia just hired a full-time associate director of family dynamics for one of its wealth management units. Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Commonwealth Financial Network of Waltham, Mass., and Wells Fargo & Co. also use psychologists and therapists. In many cases, the psychologist get directly involved with client issues. This is a great idea-says Jim Kim at FierceFinance.com-because it is a way to help tether clients to the firm, boosting wallet share. It may be hard to quantify the ROI, but it can't hurt. "Lost There, Felt Here" Harrison Ford lets the world see a square of hair ripped from his chest in a Public Service Announcement for Conservation International. CI explains: "That small pain suggested that tropical deforestation happening in other parts of the world effects not only those nearby but people all over the planet. The video is estimated to have reached more than 45 million people worldwide." What do you think? Watch Harrison Ford Lose An "Acre" in his PSA for CI's Lost There, Felt Here campaign Map of Future Forces Affecting Sustainability The Institute for the Future has published the Map of Future Forces Affecting Sustainability, prepared for the Global Environmental Management Initiative. According to the "GEMI website, "The Map has been designed to help GEMI member companies develop their own perspective of a future being shaped increasingly by external forces linked to the concept of sustainable development. The Map includes elements that some may view as controversial, but recognizes the objective of this effort is to provoke thoughtful discussions that will help companies shape their business strategies in light of a more sustainability-driven future." The site also provides a 45-minute video ‘walk through' of the six columns of The Map Kenya energy goes green to meet electricity boom NAIVASHA, Kenya (AFP) - Facing soaring electricity demands, Kenya is opting to go full steam ahead with geothermal energy to boost its production while preserving its rich environmental heritage. The 37-million-strong nation's electricity supply capacity is dangerously close to its limit at 1,080 megawatts when peak hour demand almost reaches 1,000 megawatts.With a fast-growing economy and demography, demand is climbing by eight percent each year and the country's hydro-electric capacity is peaking and being strained by chronic droughts and the impact of deforestation on rivers. Kenya's geothermal energy plan is being supported with donations and preferential loans from France's AFP, the World Bank and German cooperation. Measuring Impact Framework launched by WBCSD Geneva, 28 July 2008 - Business knows that "what gets measured gets done." In this spirit, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) launches the Measuring Impact Framework to help companies measure and assess the impact of their business activities on economic and broader development goals wherever they operate. Business case brief - Why measure? (PDF 4.7 MB) PowerPoint Presentation (3.4 MB) Big Agriculture defends ethanol. CHICAGO (Reuters) July 25th- A new group is adding its voice to the debate on using crops to produce alternative fuels such as ethanol amid rising food prices and shortages in some countries. The Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy in Washington D.C. was created by Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, Deere & Co, Monsanto Co and the Renewable Fuels Association http://www.foodandenergy.org/ World food prices rose by 40 percent last year, causing food riots, hoarding and bread lines in many countries. But this group believes that agricultural innovation -- such as genetically modified crops -- is the best way to address global hunger, not reducing biofuel production. ADM is one of the world's largest producers of biofuels, and Monsanto is a leading producer of GMO seeds. So they would say that, wouldn't they? Accenture Report Finds Data Centers Can Drop Energy Use by Half OAKLAND, Calif. -- In partnership with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, the Department of Energy and others, the new report shows how adopting energy efficiency policies and hardware management practices can lead to significant cuts in power consumption for any data center. The full Data Center Energy Forecast Report is available for download from GreenerComputing.com. Source: GreenerComputing Staff Published July 17, 2008 Environmental risk still neglected - survey -Environmental Finance, 10 July 2008 - Around two out of five senior executives admit to neglecting environmental risks, according to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Out of 320 senior global executives, 43% said they managed environmental risks in an ‘ad hoc' manner, or not at all. http://www.wbcsd.org/Plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?ObjectId=MzA2ODU The Future of Social Enterprise This working paper from HBS considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. The authors, HBS professors V. Kasturi Rangan and Herman B. Leonard, and research associate Susan McDonald, trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to solve social problems, much of it stemming from an intergenerational transfer of wealth and new wealth from financial and high-tech entrepreneurs. They further examine how these organizations can best access the untapped resources by demonstrating mission performance, and then propose three potential scenarios for how this sector might evolve. Download the working paper [PDF]. Patenting the "Climate Genes" in plants The world's largest seed and agrochemical corporations are stockpiling hundreds of monopoly patents on genes in plants that the companies will market as crops genetically engineered to withstand environmental stresses such as drought, heat, cold, floods, saline soils, and more. BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called "climate ready" genes at patent offices around the world. In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviours. The focus on so-called climate-ready genes is a golden opportunity to push genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change. But patented techno-fix seeds will not provide the adaptation strategies that small farmers need to cope with climate change. These proprietary technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research, and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds. Nonprofit ‘IPO' raises $700,000 A California nonprofit used a staple fundraising technique from the for-profit sector to generate $700,000 to combat homelessness. Massive investor coalition petitions US govt on greenhouse gas cuts Ceres and INCR signatory letter outlines three climate change policy recommendations ahead of Senate debate next month. Investors managing hundreds of billions of dollars have warned that US politicians must radically overhaul the country's climate change policies or risk losing the potential for business to find solutions to global warming. A joint letter issued today by 52 of the world's largest investors urges the Senate to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 90% below 1990 levels before 2050. Africa's farms reap rewards .....as the prices of raw materials soar - from the barley used to make beer or the cocoa used to make chocolate - leading brewers and food manufacturers from Cadbury Schweppes to Diageo are increasingly recognising their businesses will benefit from investment in African agriculture.Mark Lundy, senior research fellow at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which was created by the World Bank in the early 1970s to find ways of producing more food, claims food producers can no longer afford to ignore farmers. "It used to be very much a buyers' market ... now companies have to position themselves as good partners." By Jenny Wiggins in the FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4f6fe902-1bc4-11dd-9e58-0000779fd2ac.html IBM's Answer to the Food Crisis While the world food crisis demands both quick fixes and long-range solutions, time is of the essence. With food costs soaring, more than one billion people could find themselves at risk of starvation or severe malnutrition in the coming years. So a project announced May 15 by University of Washington researchers and IBM's (IBM) World Community Grid to speed development of better rice may be just what's needed. By Steve Hamm in Business Week Corporate-volunteering programs go global Some of the biggest corporate names are sending their employees around the globe on costly service trips in an effort to bolster company reputations, do "real good," and develop employee skill sets, The Boston Globe reported May 4. Companies like Ernst & Young, Pfizer, Timberland, and IBM have picked up on the trend. Battle of legends: Milken vs. Lipton Martin Lipton, the legendary lawyer, says the financial crisis stems from the invention of the junk bond so many years ago. As the New York Times notes, Michael Milken begs to differ. He tells the paper that junk bonds--as well as all the CDOs that invested in them--have precious little in common with subprime mortgages. And he has a point; one could argue that junk bonds in and of themselves are neither good, nor bad. It's what you do with them. Same goes for securitization. In both cases, there can be excesses. In general, Milken has a lot to say about the mess, including a bit about how more regulation will not help. I find it interesting that he has made himself a revered, somewhat nostalgic feature. Even Rudy Giuliani, the man who put him in jail, agrees.For more here's the Times article Billionaire Texas oil man makes big bets on wind Legendary Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens has gone green with a plan to spend $10 billion to build the world's biggest wind farm. But he's not doing it out of generosity - he expects to turn a buck. The Southern octogenarian's plans are as big as the Texas prairie, where he lives on a ranch with his horses, and entail fundamentally reworking how Americans use energy. Next month, Pickens' company, Mesa Power, will begin buying land and ordering 2,700 wind turbines that will eventually generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity - the equivalent of building two commercial scale nuclear power plants - enough power for about 1 million homes. Reuters, 17 April 2008 - U.S. maintains highest market-share of the world's prisoners International Herald Tribune Published: April 23, 2008 [filed under value destruction] The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes - from writing bad checks to using drugs - that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. The future of philanthropy lies in joining the wave of open source peer-production that is enriching public assets, says Mark Surman on Open Democracy. Who are the top funders of Wikipedia? Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and Richard Branson's Virgin Unite. Who funds the creative commons? Sun, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo, Facebook as well as a number of foundations created with newly minted high-tech wealth. The commons is clearly on the philanthrocapitalist menu. More importantly: collaborative, non-market peer-production was born from a world that lives on the fuzzy edge between public and private benefit. Compensation Consultants and Conflicts of Interest Global Volunteering Gets Started in Boston Last weekend in Boston, several hundred people arrived at the Harvard School of Public Health to learn more about doing good around the globe, from the international service opportunities offered by over twenty volunteer-sending organizations to workshops on topics like the basics of global volunteering, linking service and study abroad, volunteering across borders independently, and translating international service experience into a dynamic career. The new philanthropy: power, inequality, democracy The sceptical scrutiny of "philanthrocapitalism" by Michael Edwards is welcome. But markets and social enterprise could help realize the potential of a new donor economy, says Geoff Mulgan on Open Democracy; one notable quote: "The majority of press coverage continues to be fawning; conferences celebrate; and most of the books that are published in this field are strings of uncritical anecdotes which wouldn't get past the mildest peer review (see for example Pamela Hartigan & John Elkington, The power of unreasonable people [Harvard Business School Press, 2008])." Assets under management at SAM doubled in 2007 Zurich-based SAM -Sustainable Asset Management- can look back on an exceptional year in 2007. The milestones included a doubling of assets under management, successful growth initiatives in Asia, and successful expansion into the US and Canada. In the past financial year, SAM's assets under management (AuM) increased by CHF 4.7bn or 125% to CHF 8.5bn. Including the assets managed indirectly (e.g. through mandates and licences), SAM's total AuM now amount to CHF 15.1bn. [Full disclosure: SAM powers the daily stock indexes featured on this site; for which we are most grateful.] Read media release For Art, For Charity, For Fun CowParade is the world's largest public art event in which life-sized cows are designed by artists and put on display throughout select cities around the world. Check out their new website: http://www.cowparade.com/ USA 2008: The Great Depression Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive - a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisisWe knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families. By David Usborne in New York for the UK's Independent newspaper Tuesday, 1 April 2008 Full story: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-2008-the-great-depression-803095.html British online fundraiser generates over $500M At a time when most British nonprofits face falling donations, online fundraiser justgiving.com has channeled more than 250 million British pounds, over $500 million, into the sector since its 2001 launch, The Guardian reported March 25. The website has spread the appeal of charitable giving to younger generations with viral marketing techniques and sophisticated technology. Dow Jones launches Dharma Indexes Dow Jones Indexes in conjunction with Dharma InvestmentsTM has created a family of faith-based equity market indexes that screen companies for compliance with Dharmic religious traditions.The first of its kind, the Dow Jones Dharma IndexesSM are designed to integrate the value system of these religious traditions - especially Hinduism and Buddhism - into the component selection process. Thus, the Indexes restrict companies whose operations are viewed as unacceptable according to the principles of Dharma. See: http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/?event=showDharmaOverView Toyota Joins Audubon in Latest Corporate-NGO Partnership In another high-profile partnership announced recently, Toyota gave the Audubon Society its largest grant ever -- $20 million -- to fund conservation projects, train environmental leaders and boost volunteerism, the company said Wednesday. New Group to Help Muslim Charities Worldwide The Chronicle on Philanthropy blog reports on formation of the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists, an international effort to help Muslim donors and organizations make the public more aware of their work and to increase organizational capacity. After years of nonprofit work, including assisting victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, Mr. Cheema said he saw the need to bring together the world's Islamic donors....part of its work, the congress plans to create a Web site, SecureGiving, to rank charities in Muslim countries based on an as-yet-undecided criteria of governance and management standards. Mr. Cheema said the effort will help donors make sure their money is not supporting terrorists posing as Islamic charities, a concern that has grown since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Pumas, Planets and Pens: How Cues in the Environment Influence Consumer Choice Activists pressure Fidelity to drop Chinese stocks Author: Ross Kerber, Boston Globe That quietest of financial rituals, the mutual fund shareholder meeting, is becoming a forum for social activism. At a gathering that fund giant Fidelity Investments held Wednesday in Boston, shareholder proposals that would bar it from holding assets in...Sinopec and PetroChina [over their presence in Sudan]...were defeated...But while the vote went in Fidelity's favor, activists said their measures received an unusually high number of votes... Read full item here B Corporations: Verified Sustainability B Labs takes the guesswork out of which companies are actually working for the future. Companies that pride themselves on being sustainable have a new badge they can present to show their commitment to the environment, society, and corporate governance. B Labs, a non-profit based in Berwyn, PA, has created a third-party certification for "B Corporations." More than just supplying a sustainable product or service, B Corporations "create a public benefit" as an integral core of their business plan. Full story by Anne Moore Odell of SocialFunds.com http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2482.html Merrill Lynch, Carbon Disclosure Project Form Partnership to Expand Project's Reach Merrill Lynch & Co. and the Carbon Disclosure Project have created a three-year partnership to expand and improve the Project throughout the world. Wal-Mart Pushing Chinese Suppliers To Go Green Wal-Mart Stores Inc will meet with its thousands of Chinese suppliers this fall as part of a big push to reduce waste and emissions at factories that make its products, Chief Executive Lee Scott said on Thursday. "We started a very aggressive program in China that is not only going to deal with environmental sustainability, but is also going to deal more aggressively with the issues of sourcing in China," Scott said... The company's top priorities in China will be to address the appropriate disposal of waste as well as to make reductions in both waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Read full item here Global Leadership Network The United Nations Global Compact in association with the International Finance Corporation and the Global Leadership Network launched the GLN OpenAccess tool, an interactive self-assessment tool assisting companies to improve their understanding of how the management of social, environmental and governance issues impact their business and stakeholders. The tool is free of charge and available to all companies willing to use it. Top entrepreneurship papers named Over the past two years, 4,300 papers on entrepreneurship have been added to an online database, which has logged over 500,000 downloads. http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/ Can Online Investing End Poverty? Live Webcast at 4pm EDT on March 19. WHAT: A Panel Presentation featuring eBay company MicroPlace is presented by The Global Assets Project of the New America Foundation, along with Calvert Foundation and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), with the support of the International Gateway at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, cordially invite you and your colleagues for a special event discussing one of the newest innovations in asset building and poverty reduction. WHY: "Invest Wisely. End Poverty." This is the goal of eBay's new online microfinance investment marketplace, MicroPlace. While online microlending has been growing more popular with peer-to-peer offerings such as the nonprofit Kiva.org, MicroPlace is charting a whole new course in the microfinance industry, offering socially-minded Americans a new way to offer microloans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. As the only broker-dealer in the microfinance arena, MicroPlace is the first and only online service offering a way for investors to invest in the working poor, and earn both a social and financial return on the investment. WHEN: The event will be webcast live; to view and participate remotely, click here at 4pm EDT on March 19. Firms buying "illegal" ore are financing rebel arms purchases in DR Congo Many of the mines are either under the direct control of illegal armed groups or are illegally taxed by them. The two provinces produce the bulk of the country's cassiterite, the primary tin ore used by the electronics and computer industries. The report cited General Laurent Nkunda's Tutsi insurgency and the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) as two groups using mineral revenues to buy arms used in violence that has resulted in 450,000 civilians fleeing their homes. According to the Financial Times, leading brands, including Hitachi, Microsoft, Pioneer and Samsung are reportedly investigating whether tin originating from Bisie could have entered their supply chain. For further analysis of this event, see Maplecroft's Global Risks Forecast at http://www.global-risks.com/. |
Tim Wirth on Creating The UN Foundation with Ted Turner
