Update:
February, 2010
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimate that the GDP
grew in Q4 of 2009 by 5.7% will surely be revised downward.
The BEA will release a second estimate on Feb. 26, and we
expect it to be a much lower figure. BEA admitted that their
data was incomplete and that most of the increase was due to a
building of inventories and deceleration of imports. My
interview on Jan. 31, 2010, with John Williams, pre-eminent
expert on deconstructing US official statistics at
www.shadowstats.com, confirmed my distrust of this Q4 2009
GDP-growth of 5.7%. Williams agrees with us that "GDP is the
worst quality information from the US government." He
estimates the inventory buildup accounts for 3.6% of that 5.7%
GDP-growth estimate; 1.5% as an over-statement of the Personal
Consumption Expenditure which GDP states as up by 2% and
another .5% as related to the actual widening of the overall
trade deficit – even though BEA emphasized that the
deceleration of imports is accounted for as part of its rise
of 5.7% in GDP.
I have long explored the entire range of distortions that make
GDP a perverse measure of US progress, and
TIME's article agrees, pointing to our Calvert-Henderson
Quality of Life Indicators and others including the United
Nations Human Development Index (HDI).
At last, better measures of human progress are gaining
mainstream media attention: the excellent Canadian Index of
Wellbeing (CIW) at www.ciw.ca and the new report by British
researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett linking
equality with quality of life within and across countries.
They find that countries with the most equal income
distribution (by GINI) have the largest socially and
politically prosperous middle class while unequal countries do
worse on most quality of life indicators (www.equalitytrust.org.uk).
The USA scores poorly and confirms John Williams' and our view
that a massive overhaul of GDP, unemployment, inflation, money
supply and other US statistics is now urgent if we are to
address the need for more jobs.
Why has the weak US recovery produced so few jobs? Companies,
big and small are not hiring, as January 2010's job losses of
another 20,000 were reported by the BLS, after December's
losses of another 85,000. This BLS "Establishment Survey"
differed from the broader "Household Survey" which recorded
the civilian labor force dropped by 661,000, due to small
companies failing or unable to obtain financing, which the
Establishment Survey cannot detect. For 20 years, I have
pointed to reasons the USA has experienced "jobless growth" -
rooted in the abstractions of macroeconomics theories and
methods. The faith in "free trade" has prevented government
agencies from making use of futurists' broader forecasting and
planning methods used by most global corporations. Their
economic advisors' market fundamentalism warned against
"industrial policy" except for that covertly practiced by the
Department of Defense and activities in the name of "national
security." Thus, the "hollowing out" of US manufacturing has
continued for two decades at the behest of global corporations
and their investment bankers. President Bush I famously held
that it did not matter whether the US manufactured computer
chips or potato chips, while President Bush II's chair of the
Council of Economic Advisors, Gregory Mankin, maintained that
outsourcing was good for American workers who could take their
severance pay and 401Ks and become day traders on the stock
markets.
Add to these idiocies the stout denials by economists that
increasing capital-intensive technological change, automating
manufacturing and services would create the structural
unemployment we see today. Conventional measures of output
per capita masked this technological unemployment as
beneficial "increases in productivity" for decades, as we have
pointed out. Unfortunately, Obama administration economic
advisors are mostly steeped in conventional theories and
models which continue to serve Wall Street and corporate
interests at the expense of workers and individuals ( see the
excellent reports at www.prospect.org).
The US GDP increased 2.2% in the third quarter over the second
quarter decrease of an annualized 0.7%. Most of the increase
was due to the "cash for clunkers" and the $8,000 offered to
first-time homebuyers. January 2010's job losses of another
20,000 makes the official unemployment rate 9.7%, still the
highest since April 1983. Adding "discouraged" and
"part-timers" still makes the total 17%. Although the
recession is deemed officially ended, any recovery will be
fragile until job creation picks up. This may not get big
banks to step up lending to domestic companies since they make
more money with proprietary trading, hoarding their bailout
funds or sending them offshore. The good news of the 3rd
quarter’s GDP uptick must be seen in the context of four
successive quarters of negative growth. These numbers
underline what most Americans have experienced for the
past years, along with the loss of over 8 million jobs.
States facing their new fiscal year are wrestling with budget
shortfalls with California's at $24 billion, while Illinois
and Arizona have much smaller deficits.
North Dakota
still stars with continuing budget surpluses, as we discuss
later.
President Obama's $787 billion Economic Recovery and
Reinvestment plan is now underway and its effect showed in the
third quarter GDP improvement. Deeply entrenched ideologies
and special-interest politics are battling over the 2010
budget of $3.6 trillion. Cutting the Pentagon's weapons
procurement and subsidies for big farmers would boost
investments in education, health care, efficiency and
renewable energy. At least the President's 30,000 troop surge
will be costed transparently in the budget. All this was
emphasized by the oversight report on TARP, July 21st
that US taxpayers are liable for up to $23.7 trillions of
bailouts (www.sigtarp.gov).
All this shows that the great transition from the
fossil-fueled, unsustainable Industrial Era to the green
economy of the Solar Age (see my The Politics of the Solar
Age, 1981) is now well underway.
Private investments in SolarAge companies since 2007 total
$1.24 trillion (see our Green Transition Scoreboard at
www.EthicalMarkets.com). The Copenhagen conference only
confirmed the need to ramp up private and public investments
in green economic development, particularly in developing
countries. The $350 billion given to banks by former Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson and the new incumbent Timothy Geithner
has apparently been wasted. The uproar over AIG bonuses made
executive pay an international issue for the G-20 in
Pittsburgh, Sept 24-25th, along with tighter regulation of all
financial markets. The United Nations General Assembly
Meeting in New York, June 24-26th, debated the global
financial crisis and adopted many of the recommendations of
its Commission of Experts, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. In my
editorial, “Game
Over!”, (www.ethicalmarkets.com),
I describe the new power of this new group of 192 nations
which critiqued the G-20, the G-7 and the G-8, calling for a
new global reserve currency, much deeper reforms than proposed
by the Obama Administration, as well as the need for a tax on
all global financial transactions (www.un.org/ga).
No wonder
US
voters are furious, demanding to know why their schools and
other vital services are being cut and why small banks, credit
unions and homeowners were not included in the bailout. This
anger over the unfairness of the bailouts of those "too big to
fail" corporations spilled over onto the healthcare debate –
amplified by coverage of unruly town hall meetings in August.
Meanwhile, local initiatives to restore homegrown economies
are flourishing (see my "Democratizing
Finance" at www.ethicalmarkets.com). The campaign "Move
Your Money" (from big to small banks and to credit unions) is
catching on, while many are studying the state Bank of North
Dakota which has kept the state's budget in surplus and grown
local jobs (www.ethicalmarkets.com
The Public Option in Banking).
Trickle down economics of bailing out Wall Street is colliding
with the bottom-up demands of middle class voters for
fairness, accountability and transparency. It's about time
for this debate and the deeper debate about whether money is
more important than the other forms of wealth that GDP counts
and why Wall Street doesn't count: human "capital," knowledge,
ecological assets and productivity. President Obama
campaigned for recognition of these uncounted forms of wealth
and of the higher values of Americans: trust in each other and
our institutions and fairness in rewarding hard work in an
economy designed to include opportunities for a better future
for all. Many new investors see these opportunities, as I
describe in "The
New Financiers."
Now for the good news. The confluence of the financial
meltdown and increasing threats to climate stability are
leading to much creativity by these new financiers in devising
new ways of investing in the needed global transition to a low
carbon "re-industrialization." The weakness of the
Waxman-Markey energy bill passed in the US Congress by 7 votes
focused the critiques of its reliance on Wall Street-centric
cap and trade markets which have so far failed to reduce
carbon emissions. The new financiers' spate of proposals for a
"Marshall Plan" type plan to finance a doubling of production
of carbon-free, efficiency and renewable energy and smart
infrastructure every year for the next 10 years are welcome
indeed (see International Climate Bonds Proposals – Draft from
the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets at
www.ethicalmarkets.com, courtesy of Sean Kidney and
Climate Risk Pty of Australia). Their report, Climate
Solutions II: Low Carbon Re-Industrialization was also
supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and is downloadable
from
www.EthicalMarkets.com.
This rapid deployment of solar, wind, geothermal, ocean power
sources as well as retro fitting for maximum energy efficiency
over 10 years is projected to cost $10 trillion. This can be
covered by issuance of several classes of new assets:
long-bonds, zero coupon bonds, with hedging against the main
risk: governments back-sliding on their greenhouse gas
emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol. While this seems
like a large sum, it is less than 10% of the $120 trillion in
pension funds and other institutional portfolios. Since
pension funds and other government bonds focus on long
maturities, they are ideally suited to finance climate
prosperity bonds out of the savings they will produce: from
energy efficiency and in reducing the cost of renewable energy
(with free fuel sources from the Earth) over the costs of
fossil fuels (projected to keep slowly rising). More good
news is the collapse of gas prices due to the availability of
gas deposits in shale in the USA and other countries. This
allows coal-fired power plants to replace coal with cheaper
natural gas for base loads as well as peak power. Thus, many
coal-fired plants may be retired and few will now be built.
Business leaders met in Copenhagen in May 2009 to address
climate risks in their companies' fossil-fueled processes and
agreed that the opportunities in shifting to a green, solar,
wind, geothermal, ocean and energy-efficient global economy
were enormous. The 700 business leaders participating in the
meeting declared that immediate action would be cheaper than
any further delays. While 193 governments failed to agree at
the UN Conference in Climate in
Copenhagen
in December 2009, investments in low-carbon technology sectors
continue to grow.
The key will be to keep pressure on governments to stop
back-sliding and pandering to the fossil-fueled industry
sectors with toothless cap and trading which will only make
Wall Street players richer. Downsizing bloated financial
sectors will be imperative. Those on Wall Street and in
London grew to 25% of U.S. and U.K. GDP. An efficient
financial sector should be less than 10% of a country's GDP.
Yet
Washington
has still to follow through with vital reforms, while
Britain's head of their Financial Services Authority agrees
that financial sectors must be downsized and recommended a tax
on financial transactions. Debate is growing that such a tax
is the best way to assess Wall Street for its cleanup costs –
rather than taxpayers.
So today's GDP figures still force us to re-examine our
rearview-mirror focus on the costly past and reformulate
statistics themselves which only measure money transactions.
They overlook the savings in shifting to the new green economy
and the vast riches in our society from energy-efficiency
while ignoring the almost 50% of all productive work that is
unpaid and therefore omitted from GDP. From caring for our
homes, children, the elderly and sick and volunteering in our
communities to exchanging and bartering goods and services,
this vast unpaid "love economy" is thriving and increasingly
electronically traded on e-Bay, Craigslist, Freecycle,
time-banking and hundreds of other websites, flea markets and
on radio programs and via cell phones. My monograph with
physicist Fritjof Capra, "Qualitative Growth," published by
Britain's Society of Chartered Accountants and Tomorrow's
Company, was launched in the House of Lords in Britain's
Parliament in November, 2009, co-sponsored by WWF, the World
Wildlife Fund.
President Obama's team includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt who
understands the transition to the green economy and sees all
the new possibilities in this explosion of internet and
community trading such as Making Change Without Money, the
title of a new series of papers by Gwendolyn Hallsmith and
Edgar Cahn, both pioneer community organizers. I have been
pointing to all these alternatives to government-printed money
as well as all the local currencies helping to clear local
markets: e.g., the Schumacher Society's Berkshares in
Massachusetts and time-based currencies based on Paul Glover's
Ithaca Hours (www.smallisbeautiful.com).
The shocking truth that a badly designed, irresponsible,
poorly regulated financial system can disrupt the lives of
millions is now opening our eyes to practical alternatives to
re-knit our communities – by-passing Wall Street and bankers'
money games. A bill to reform the Federal Reserve System is
now before Congress which would curb the power of banks to
create our money and restore this to our government (see
www.monetary.org). A chorus of Freedom of Information
demands forced the Fed to finally describe where all the
bailout money for the big banks and AIG was disbursed.
Billions went to pay off Goldman Sachs' bets at 100% and other
credit default swaps held by other Wall Street firms as well
as foreign banks. These kinds of credit derivatives should be
banned. $683 trillion of these (Bank for International
Settlements December 2008) overhang a world economy whose GDP
is only $62 trillion! (IMF October 2008). The only issue is
who should take the hit in writing them off. So far, the
political clout of the financial sectors has forced the bill
on to taxpayers. The SEC is slow in promulgating reforms on
short-selling, as is the CFTC in bringing credit derivatives
under regulation on new clearing houses.
Deep divisions in the U.S. public remain. A flashpoint,
second only to the economy and Iraq, is the failing U.S.
healthcare system, as employers dropped another 4.9 million
Americans from health insurance plans. Many
U.S.
companies claim they can no longer compete globally, while
some called for a single-payer national insurance system in
coalitions with labor unions. This and the "Medicare for All"
proposals were banished from the bills. The number of
uninsured children increased between 2004 and 2005 from 7.9
million to 8.3 million even as President Obama signed the
SCHIP bill. The Massachusetts plan, echoed by then Senator
Barack Obama, requiring every person to buy health insurance
or face a fine will probably face Constitutional challenges.
This may simply feed our vast dysfunctional medical-industrial
complex, already costing twice what other advanced countries
pay -- with little better outcomes for patients. President
Obama's Health Summit,
March 5, 2009,
brought all the stakeholders together to little avail.
At last, all the efforts over the past 30 years to correct our
money-based GDP, including indicators of education, health and
environment and subtract costs of pollution and
resource-depletion are being publicly debated. When we add in
that 50% of unpaid work and accounts for our human, social and
ecological assets, we will take heart in our real wealth and
community riches. The European Parliament's lead in its
Beyond GDP debate in 2007 set the stage, and a new commission
headed by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen reported
in April on how to make these corrections to GDP so that our
national scorecards of progress can steer us toward restoring
health to the real economies of
Main Street.
The European Commission's conference
Beyond GDP in the Parliament November 19-20, 2007, was
attended by 700 experts and parliamentarians. I am honored to
serve as a member of the Advisory Board. EU President Barosso
and the President of the Parliament both endorsed the goal to
integrate social environmental statistics. A survey in ten
countries by GlobeScan and Ethical Markets Media found large
majorities in all favoring this broadening of GDP (www.EthicalMarkets.com
and
www.beyond.gdp.eu). The U.S. Senate held hearings in the
Commerce Committee on "Re-thinking GDP as a Measure of
National Strength" on March 12, 2008 -- with input from me on
our Indicators, submitted for the record. The "BEYOND GDP"
issue is now promoted in many countries by the SIMPOL network
which fosters simultaneous policy adoption by politicians of
such proposals for global sustainability
(www.simpol.org.uk). Even The Economist
editorialized in "Grossly Distorted Picture" (March 13, 2008)
that GDP growth was not the best measure of national progress
(see my editorials at
www.HazelHenderson.com).
China's
President Hu Jintao called for continued effort on it "Green
GDP" in spite of resistance by local officials to push
traditional GDP-growth (China Daily, July 17, 2007).
China devised its own changes to GDP accounting to subtract
pollution and resource depletion (The Economist, "Greening of
China," Oct 22, 2005, p. 43). This "Green GDP" deducted 3% of
environmental costs of the current GNP-growth economic model
according to a Task Force Interim Report (2007). However,
local officials still judged by GDP-growth managed to suspend
the Green GDP. As China's pollution is now visible on TV
worldwide, after the Olympic Games, we believe the Green GDP
will be reinstated. The British government report by Sir
Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank,
states that stabilizing CO2 emissions at 550 parts per million
could cost one percent of global GDP growth and would prevent
a likely global depression and economic losses of from 5-20%
of global GDP (Financial Times, Oct 20, 2006). China is
moving rapidly to create its own green economy and is already
the world's largest producer of solar panels, a leader in wind
power and has the first plug-in hybrid car on sale now which
will reach the US market in 2010 costing $22,000.
Meanwhile, President Obama faces huge challenges including an
unemployment rate of 10% and another 85,000 jobs lost in
December 2009. Obama's $787 billion stimulus hoped to create
or save 3 million jobs and take the country toward less
dependence on foreign oil. Change can come faster by
reforming and rechanneling of global finance toward local
credit unions and businesses needed now to grow the greener
economy. The G-20 summits (see my "More
Advice for Summiteers on Reforming the Global Casino" at
www.EthicalMarkets.com) produced little progress, while
monetary authorities continue to throw trillions into their
unrepentant banks. The US Treasury's "stress tests" still
allowed many "too big to fail" banks to continue rather than
be placed in FDIC receiverships then broken up and pieces sold
off. The Geithner public-private investment partnership to
buy banks' toxic assets provides huge subsidies to hedge funds
and private equity firms while offering little upside for the
additional $75-100 billion of taxpayer funds. Additional
bailouts of Fannie and Freddie are equally troublesome.
Geithner, Larry Summers and Obama economic team still cannot
see beyond the obsolete economics textbooks or grasp that
economies need to be "de-financialized." Paul Volker found it
easier to take his program of breaking up big banks on the
speaking circuit.
Inflation is no longer the immediate worry, as personal
consumption is falling. Long-term, inflation is likely to rise
following the trillions of various government bailouts, Fed
easing, loans, etc. The G-20 leaders of Brazil, Russia, India
and China are offering proposals for a new global reserve
currency: either a "basket" of major currencies or IM F
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to be expanded. China, with
over $1 trillion of US bonds, is nervous about inflation of US
dollars. The September 22nd G-20 Summit held in
Pittsburgh
discussed these proposals and the overdue need to end
subsidies on fossil fuels.
Many government rule changes are being enacted with no cost to
taxpayers, including the FASB's new guidance rules allowing
"significant judgment" on "fair value" modification of the
"mark to market" rules, while providing greater transparency.
Bringing back the uptick rule and regulating short-selling
are still under review as well as naked shorting and other
such criminal activities. The G-20 could agree to less a than
1% tax on the global currency trading of up to $4 trillion
daily (mostly speculation) by installing computer systems like
FXTRS (see paper at
www.hazelhenderson.com). Cleaning up Wall Street is
necessary to restore confidence and the financial sector needs
downsizing from its bloated 20% of US GDP to an efficient
financial sector of less than 10% of GDP. Unrealistic pay and
bonuses will also need cutting.
Congress can, for a start:
-
Focus the balance of the TARP's $350 billion on local
lending through credit unions. Mortgages now "under water"
should require lenders to take at least 50% of the
"haircuts", similar to the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC)
from the 1930s.
-
Re-instate the very small tax on stock transactions of at
least .25% as in the Securities Turnover Excise Tax enacted
in 1914 and repealed in 1966. Many other countries in
Europe
and
Asia levy such a tax, which curbs speculation and would
bring in the USA some $150 billion per year.
-
Extend further Production Tax Credits for renewable energy
and add $150 billion to develop solar, wind, geothermal and
upgrade our electric grid. Reduce the over $200 billion of
annual subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power -- so as
to create a level playing field.
-
Invest more in restoring and maintaining US infrastructure.
-
Re-instate federal revenue sharing with states.
-
Extend unemployment insurance to laid off employees.
Some of these proposals are now part of the Economic
Stabilization and Reinvestment Plan for $787 billion.
Oil prices around $80 are still less than the high of $145 per
barrel. Much of the drop is due to reduced demand due to the
now global recession. Yet oil may stay at $80 a barrel since
$70 is the average cost of production. Constant media
coverage, million-strong protest groups like those at
www.StopOilSpeculation.com, and investigations by the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the US Senate
scared off pension funds and college endowments that lost
heavily on their oil bets! As I point out in my "Changing
the Game of Finance," it's time for asset managers to
ditch their obsolete "efficient markets" hypothesis and adopt
new ESG (environment, social, governance) asset valuation
models, i.e., triple bottom line accounting. Thus, many
speculators began unwinding their long positions and this,
plus reduced demand, brought the price down. We agree with
the "peak oil" researchers that supply is not keeping pace
with demand. Yet speculation was another factor, denied by
most financial players (see my "A Closer Look at Oil
Speculators"), as was the flight from the US dollar, bonds and
equities into commodity index funds as a hedge against
inflation (see also "New Games in the Global Casino", Inter
Press Service, June 2008 and at
www.EthicalMarkets.com). The financial crisis mentality in
Congress, Wall Street and the financial media has led to
unprecedented volatility. Useful checks on government
statistics: GDP, CPI, Unemployment and M-3 are available at
www.shadowstats.com compiled by economist John Williams
who tracks data revisions that overstate the performance of
the US economy.
The unemployment rate, now at 10%, still excludes those
"discouraged" while including increases in part-time jobs held
by those needing full-time work, bringing the true rate to
17%. The Fed's easing to 0.25% rates, which are effectively
zero, leaves fixed-income investors with few choices. All
these bouncing numbers and uncertainty about Congress continue
to spook markets. The Fed can no longer oblige Wall Street
with more interest rate cuts. Chairman Bernanke, whose
re-appointment is supported by President Obama, no doubt
realizes his own role in pushing up oil and food prices and
hurting the US dollar. The result is that commodities became
a new asset class, which then crashed. Traders piled into
commodities with 16 to 1 leverage due to low margin
requirements. The quickest, best way to curb the pure
speculators is to raise margin requirements to force traders
to put up their own money. The CFTC closed the "ENRON
loophole" enacted in 2000 which shielded energy trading from
oversight, and is addressing the "London loophole" where
traders move to the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
Subsidies for ethanol and mandates in legislation should also
be repealed.
The Fed's job with so many new tasks is now harder -- trying
to steer between recession and inflation. Interest rates are
actually negative when corrected for inflation. The role of
the Fed, a private institution owned by its 12 regions' banks,
is now coming under scrutiny by Bloomberg, Fox Business News
and other media for its secrecy, while over 300 Congress
members have co-sponsored Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed.
State-owned banks like the Bank of North Dakota could expand
local lending. It provides funds to local banks for low-cost
credit directly to
North Dakota's
infrastructure, education and services, as well as businesses
(see "Monetize
This!" and "Escape
from Pottersville" by Ellen Brown at
www.ethicalmarkets.com). The middle class is hurting from
high prices, job losses and foreclosures. A CNN/Opinion
Research Poll back in March 14th-16th, 2008
found 74% of Americans believed the economy was already in
recession. The Census Bureau reported
August 29, 2007 that the median household income in 2006 was
$1000 less than in 2000. In 2006, 36.5 million Americans were
living in poverty, 5 million more than six years ago. The
New York Times editorialized "in the last 4 years the
spoils of the nation's economic growth have flowed almost
exclusively to the wealthy" (August 29, 2007). Meanwhile,
food prices worldwide are causing hunger and malnutrition for
millions. One sector benefitting is the growing barter economy
says Bob Meyer, publisher of
Barter News.
A revealing look at these issues is A Demon of Our Own
Design (2007) by former hedge fund manager Richard
Bookstaber and Fools Gold by Gillian Tett of the
Financial Times showing how financial engineering of
ever-more exotic swaps, derivatives, options, etc are
themselves adding to market instabilities worldwide. Another
market institution, the Depository Trust and Clearing
Corporation (DTCC) has a backlog in handling the huge volume
of derivatives trading. Much of the volatility on Wall St. is
due to the failure of these exotic "quant" models and the need
for hedge fund managers to sell assets to cover margin calls
from their bankers. Yet other challenges to Wall Street's
conventional wisdom are the best-seller, The Black Swan,
by veteran options trader and mathematician Nassim
Nicholas Taleb, and Lecturing Birds on Flying by Paulo
Triana, who critique risk assessment models used by investors
and banks. I made similar critiques of such models as Value
At Risk (VAR) used so widely that unanticipated events could
lead to system-wide crises in The UN: Policy & Financing
Alternatives which I co-edited (Elsevier Scientific, UK,
1995, 1996).
Inflation must keep the Fed on alert longer term, despite new
fears that collapsing demand may mean deflation. The core
rate (excluding food and energy) is suspect, prompting a
scathing editorial in The Economist calling this use of
the core index "highly misleading" since most people eat and
drive! (June 23, 2007, p.16) We have made this same point for
many years. Meanwhile, behind all the headline numbers,
average wages for non-supervisory workers remained stagnant,
foreclosures continue, house prices stagnate, and many deeper
structural problems in the USA go unaddressed. The $787
stimulus has repaired some USA infrastructure and provided
some green jobs. The growing green economy worldwide is
overlooked by Wall Street's obsolete asset-allocation models
dominated by the fossil fueled sectors (see my The
Sustainability Sector at
www.seekingalpha.com). The growing gap between rich and
less affluent citizens is worrying Democrats and Republicans -
but their concerns offered the familiar remedy: more GNP-based
economic growth. Economist Joseph Stiglitz now estimates the
Iraq occupation will total $3 trillion in his The Three
Trillion Dollar War (2008).
Good news is the accelerating shift to renewable energy with
leadership at municipal and state levels, with over 600 cities
now adopting "green" energy goals. Congress finally extended
production tax credits for renewable energy (still only 1% of
the subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power). Venture
capital continues to cascade into green technology and energy
companies, with no less than 14 new stock indexes to track
their progress as I cover in Ethical Markets: Growing the
Green Economy from
Chelsea Green Publishing (winner of the Best Business Book
2007 AXIOM Award) and in the TV special, Growing the Green
Economy, airing on PBS stations in 2007, reaching 49.5% of
all US TV households. Job creation revisions by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics are now regularly expected. Such large
revisions are unsettling to financial markets. Yet, since GDP
is not a good indicator of overall progress -- it should be
de-emphasized or broadened to include more measures of
sustainability and quality of life, as outlined in my invited
commentary on Marketplace
(National Public Radio, July 28, 2006).
I hope the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators may
whet your appetite to delve deeper and feed your interest in
some or all of these aspects of quality of life. These
Indicators are featured in the financial TV series "Ethical
Markets," which showcases the most ethical CEOs and companies,
the cleanest and greenest technologies, and all the new
indices of socially responsible companies. This series is
airing on many PBS stations covering 45 million households in
the USA (see
www.ethicalmarkets.com). We will continue tracking this
holistic view of our lives, society, and the economy, so that
you can remain empowered with these facts, as citizens,
consumers, employers and investors. Below are links to more
details about current issues relating to:
Hazel Henderson can be reached at
www.hazelhenderson.com |
