Capital Institute Blog

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  • Ammon Bundy ·

What Bundy and His Merry Militia Can Learn From TransCanada

Ammon Bundy and his assault-rifle-packing militia took over the Malheur National Refuge in eastern Oregon to kick off the New Year. Their gripe appears to be the Federal Government’s pesky grazing regulations interfering with their “right” to earn a profit off government land.[1] Gonna’ be a showdown at the last chance corral I guess. Now I imagine Bundy and the…
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  • Climate Change ·

Progress at COP Encouraging, But Misses Pope Francis as Modernity’s Galileo

It was exciting to be in Paris during the COP talks on Climate. There was an unprecedented united movement of scientists, civil society, progressive business leaders, investors, and activists representing social and ecological interests from around the world, all demanding our political leaders put the common good ahead of national interests and actually lead. Soon we will know the results.…
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  • Climate Change ·

How Paris Changes Our Work

It doesn’t. Proximity amplifies the terror. And the fear. I learned that on 9-11. I agonize as I mourn those lost in Paris, and mourn for their families, their friends and colleagues. I am saddened to consider the now indelible line between what came before and what comes after that horrific evening of Friday the 13th. A fresh scar seared…
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  • Energy Network Science ·

Franciscan Economics & Regenerative Capitalism

We are pleased to share with you this unsolicited guest blog post from Bob E. Ulanowicz, an American theoretical ecologist and philosopher.    The recent media flurry over Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, appears to have missed his major thrust, which happens to connect strongly with Regenerative Capitalism. Most reviews highlight Francis’ concern about global warming or his Integral Ecology – the…
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  • Carbon ·

BoE Central Banker Addresses Stranded Assets

We were very encouraged to hear Bank of England Governor Mark Carney address the financial market stabilization risk of “stranded assets,” the risk that if we are to avoid 2 degree warming, we will need to leave up to 80 percent of proved oil, gas, and coal reserves in the ground, echoing the important message that has been promoted tirelessly…
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  • Adam Smith ·

The Pope’s Message on Ecology and Economy

How to reconcile the “invisible hand” with the “Golden Rule?” That question first preoccupied my mind while I was a Managing Director at (the old) JPMorgan in the late 1990’s and inspired the creation of Capital Institute in 2010. Too often, discussion around this question devolves into the same shallow debate (Capitalism versus Communism or Socialism) we see now in…
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  • Competition ·

Trump and Amazon: Are We Losing With All Our “Winning?”

Like many of you, I have been trying to make sense of candidate Trump. But dismissing him as “not serious,” or merely describing the “what” in colorful language (megalomaniac, narcissist), fails to explain the “why.” Why such an unseemly candidate is so popular right now is baffling to me as it is to many. If it’s just “anger at Washington,”…
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  • Regenerative Economy ·

The Problem of Rising Rents and Falling Incomes Seen Through the Regenerative Lens

This week’s guest blogger is Dr. Sally Goerner, Capital Institute’s Science Advisor. We are the poorest urban county not because we can’t produce wealth, but because we haven’t built what we need to capture it. You spend your life enriching someone else, somewhere else. –Yorman Nunez, from the Field Guide’s Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative story, 2013 (1) Affordable housing is very much…
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  • Goldman Sachs ·

Is There Anyone’s Money Harvard Would Not Take?

It’s fitting that Hedge Fund speculator John Paulson gave his $400 million donation to Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The largest in the history of the school, it was described as an act of “stunning generosity” by President Faust. That’s her name. You can’t make this up. Paulson of course is known for his role in engineering…
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  • Columbia University ·

Trading Away Our Sovereignty

This post was previously published on the Huffington Post’s Business page. “Free Trade” was in the news this Memorial Day weekend. President Obama is pushing hard for “fast track” approval of his Trans-Pacific Partnership (“TPP”) Agreement, calling for a simple up or down vote without the possibility of amendments or floor debate. The New York Times reported that Senate Majority…
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  • Anthropocene ·

How Finance Can Help Save Our Planet

The following post was adapted from a chapter I wrote for John G. Taft’s new book, A Force for Good, published just this past week by Palgrave Macmillan. John is the CEO of RBC Wealth Management, and I am proud to be in the illustrious company of individuals like Mary Schapiro, Robert Shiller, Sheila Bair, Roger Martin, and Dominic Barton,…
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  • Climate Change ·

China: Ecological Civilization Rising?

Returning to China for the first time in a quarter century this month was equally awe inspiring and terrifying. The observation deck of the truly gorgeous Shanghai World Financial Center is breathtaking, a fitting testament to China’s rise. But it was the unexpected sense that we might be experiencing history at DeTao Group’s summit in Shanghai, “Future New Economy: Sustainable Model…
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  • Climate Change ·

How About a ‘Not-So-Fast’ Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

  The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potentially historic trade agreement being aggressively pursued by the Obama administration, represents a cornerstone in its strategic pivot to Asia. If ratified by all 12 Pacific Rim countries currently engaged in the negotiations, it would create the largest free-trade zone in the world, accounting for some 40% of global GDP and a third of global…
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  • Capitalism ·

MONEYBALL: Reinventing the Game of Capitalism Using a New Scientific Model

We are pleased to introduce this week’s guest blogger, Dr. Sally Goerner, who is joining Capital Institute as a Science Advisor.   There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really going on. And this leads those who run major league teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams… Baseball thinking is medieval. They are…
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  • Divestment ·

The Club of Rome’s Next Act

The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 but really came into the public eye with the publication of Limits to Growth in 1972. The controversial book, which sold 12 million copies in 37 languages, first called attention to the systemic limitations of the exponential expansion of the human population and the related material inputs and waste outputs of its…