Capital Institute Blog

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  • Carbon ·

Three Fathers for Father’s Day

Last week, Capital Institute and Benjamin Barber’s Interdependence Movement co-convened a conversation at NYU’s Kimmel Center titled, “Ecological and Economic Interdependence: A Conversation with Bill McKibben and Graciela Chichilnisky.” The video link will be available on our site soon. As I sit here on Father’s Day thinking back on the
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  • Anthropocene ·

“Welcome to the Anthropocene”

“The Economist” ran this cover story last week. It’s the most important news item in 10,000 years. Of course it’s not really “news.” In 2000, atmospheric chemists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer first suggested the term, meaning “the recent age of man,” the
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  • Derivatives ·

“US Debt Default Would Be a Moral Disaster”

So declared JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regarding the prospect of a US default on its debt, after which he received a standing ovation at the University of Colorado’s Denver School of Business. Hmm…Let’s do a little press review – the following items quoted from recent news articles: JPMorgan Chase recently lost a class-action lawsuit
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  • Future of Finance ·

The $4 Billion Pen

Matt Taibbi’s “The People vs. Goldman Sachs” which appeared in Rolling Stone this week is a good and damning piece.  In his latest attack on Goldman (“the Vampire Squid”), Taibbi likens the scathing 650 page bipartisan Levin-Coburn report on
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  • Future of Finance ·

“No Compound Growth is Sustainable”

“The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable.  If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash.  We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.”  –  Jeremy Grantham, GMO Quarterly Letter That sounds like something you’ve heard before at Capital Institute!   But
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  • Future of Finance ·

Finance Professor Earns “King’s” Ransom at Galleon Trial

I’m not following the trial of hedge fund manager Raj (“King”) Rajaratnam very closely, and I have no unique insight into the case other than what I read in the press.  To me, the wiretap evidence incriminating “the king” appears overwhelming.  The defense’s strategy suggesting it was all “public information” is insulting to common sense, much less to market professionals.…
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  • Complexity ·

Progress at Bretton Woods

I returned late last night from the second Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Conference which took place at Bretton Woods. This was the site of the historic Bretton Woods Agreement signed in 1944, establishing the IMF and the World Bank, and creating the global world financial order
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  • Future of Finance ·

The Relevance of EF Schumacher in the 21st Century

People often ask me to recommend “just three books” in order to study the ideas behind my current thinking.  While this is an impossible task, when forced I usually answer Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher, For the Common Good, by Herman Daly and John Cobb, and The Great Work, by Thomas Berry, listed in the order that I read their work.
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  • Future of Finance ·

Finally, a Discussion of Scale

Adair Turner, Chairman of the FSA (the SEC of the United Kingdom) is smart, articulate, and more aware than any senior regulator or finance official currently in power on this side of the Atlantic in my judgment. His 2011 Clare Distinguished Lecture in Economics and Public Policy on Reforming Finance is worth reading. In it, he discusses three interrelated ongoing…