A Cinderella Story – If the shoe fits

Long ago in the Ancient land of Egypt were the green water of the Nile River flows into the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea lived a young maiden named Rhodopis, she born in Greece but was kidnapped by pirates and carried down into Egypt where she was sold into slavery. Her owner turned out to be a kind old man who spent most of his time under a tree sleeping. Because of this he never saw how the other girls in the house, all servant girls, taunted and teased her because she looked differently from them. Their hair was straight and black while hers was golden and curly. They had brown eyes and she had green. Their skin had the glow of Copper, but she had pale skin that burned easily in the sun causing them to call her Rosy Rhodopis. They also made her work hard shouting at her all day, "Go to the river and wash the clothes," "Mend my robe," "Chase the geese from the garden, "Bake the bread."

Now she had no friends only the animals. She had trained the birds to eat from her hand, a monkey to sit on her shoulder, and the old hippopotamus would slide up on the bank out of the mud to be closer to her. At the end of the day if she wasn't too tired she would go down to the river to be with her animal friends and if she had any energy left from the hard day's work she would dance and sing for them.

One evening as she was dancing, twirling around lighter than air with her feet barely touching the ground, the old man woke from his sleep and watched as she danced. He admired her dancing and felt that one so talented should not be without shoes. He ordered her a special pair of slippers. The shoes were gilded with rose-red gold and the soles were leather. Now the servant girls really disliked her for they were jealous of her beautiful slippers.

Word arrived that the Pharaoh was holding court in Memphis and all in the kingdom were invited. Oh how she wanted to go with the servant girls. For she knew there would be dancing, singing, and lots of wonderful food. As the servant girls prepared to leave in their finest clothes they turned to her and gave her more chores to do before they returned. They poled their raft away leaving a sad girl on the bank.

As she began to wash the clothes in the river she sang a sad little song--"wash the linen, weed the garden, grind the grain." The hippopotamus grew tired of this little song and splashed back into the river. The splashing of the water wet her slippers. She quickly grabbed them up, wiped it off and placed them in the sun to dry. As she was continuing with her chores the sky darkened and as she looked up she saw a falcon sweep down, snatch one of her slippers, and fly away. Rhodopis was in awe for she knew it was Horus who had taken her shoe. Rhodopis now with only one slipper put it away in her tunic.

Now the Pharaoh, Ahmose 1, Pharaoh of upper and lower Egypt was sitting on his throne looking out over the people and feeling very bored. He much preferred to be riding across the desert in his chariot. Suddenly the falcon swooped down and dropped the rose-red golden slipper in his lap. Surprised but knowing this was a sign from Horus he sent out a decree that all maidens in Egypt must try on the slipper, and the owner of the slipper would be his queen. By the time the servant girls arrived the celebrations had ended and the Pharaoh had left by chariot in search of the owner of the golden slipper.

After searching on land and not finding the owner he called for his barge and began to travel the Nile pulling into every landing so maidens could try on the slipper. As the barge rounded the bend in front of the home of Rhodopis all heard the sounds of the gong, the trumpets blaring, and saw the purple silk sails. The servant girls ran to the landing to try on the shoe while she hid in the rushes. When the servant girls saw the shoe they recognized it as Rhodopis's slipper but they said nothing and still tried to force their feet into the slipper. The Pharaoh spied her hiding in the rushes and asked her to try on the slipper. She slid her tiny foot into the slipper and then pulled the other from her tunic. The Pharaoh pronounced that she would be his queen. The servant girls cried out that she was a slave and not even Egyptian. The Pharaoh responded with "She is the most Egyptian of all...for her eyes are as green as the Nile, her hair as feathery as papyrus, and her skin the pink of a lotus flower."

From Strabo 64 BCE – 24 CE


I was intrigued in the past few weeks by three encounters with ‘due diligence’. In one instance, the examination was directed at me; in one, the diligence was directed at a particular transaction upon which our team is working; and, yet a third where diligence was directed at the organization I lead. In each of these cases, I found myself amazed at the degree to which we’ve grown accustomed, as a society, to the assumption of mistrust. However, I’m equally perplexed by how we’ll ‘trust’ unknown ‘independent’ parties with whom we have no connection to confirm or deny the veracity of a fact or opinion giving no regard to their character.

In the personal due diligence, a firm was hired to inquire about my character and my background – academic, professional, and personal. The contracted firm was filled with former law enforcement and intelligence types who are accustomed to background checks. Not surprisingly, given their penchant for intrigue, they found artifacts of information on websites – many of which I monitor – and then sought to contact people with whom I interacted at events across the world. What I found most fascinating was the degree to which the artifacts collected and the persons solicited for opinions reflected a very narrow spectrum of my life – a life which, had I been asked, would have been more completely understood by asking me directly for a list of friend and foe – fan and detractor. Ignoring the subject of diligence and following a standard operating procedure for background checks, the contracted firm touched an insignificant amount of my life and, as a result, drew conclusions on an anemic set of observations. And somebody paid good money for that.

In the case of the transaction, a group elected to send some of their team to visit to explore a potential business relationship. The team was assembled in haste with limited knowledge of what we do as an organization and with even less knowledge about the environment in which the contemplated transaction existed. As I observed the delegates confront the unusual nature of our operation and the opportunity, I mused about what precise value was being served by having strangers in a strange context observe phenomenon for which they had no context. Could they really provide discernment or insight into anything that went on? Would anyone conclude that they ‘understood’ the opportunity based on the experience?

And in the third instance, a government entity with several decades of experience in being abused and mislead by countless business, NGO, and multi-lateral entities, decided to do ‘due diligence’ on our firm. Having worked for months with this entity and having performed countless services for them in business practices which they report never having experienced before, they elected to demand a ‘due diligence’ checklist prior to consummating a business for which they stand to benefit greatly. Ironically, the questions that they asked are questions that are drawn from convention. Ironically, the questions that they wanted answered have NO bearing whatsoever on the transaction. Yet, as if compelled by some unseen hand, they needed their diligence questions answered before they could move forward. In this instance, the true tragedy is that there is no person associated with the entity who would actually have the business or financial experience to understand the materials requested but, somehow, the knowledge that documents were exchanged would comfort those who have already experienced a transformative engagement – one that they simple can’t believe is possible.

In each of these three cases, I was entertained, in a Greek tragic sense of theater, in the delusion which is passed off as diligence. And central to the failings of each of the three exercises is a fundamental human assumption which is patently false. You see, when you ask a question, you are already making the assumption that: a) you know what you should ask; and b) you’d recognize the substantive answer or data when you saw it. These two assumptions are the height of hubris and are the proximate cause for most flawed decisions. If you want to know about a person, the only way you can truly understand or gain confidence in them is to actually interact with them and observe their behavior in a representative set of circumstances. By assuming that the right people to ask about me are people that show up in media, for example, the diligence firm gained no insight into how I interact with interns who build houses with me in Honduras or Mexico. By assuming that they knew how to judge a business opportunity, the transaction team relied on inferential projections of legal and business conditions familiar in their ecosystem but entirely foreign to the opportunity at hand. And by assuming that an enterprise is merely the sum of its shareholder communication, a government failed to trust its own experience of performance.

Every business and social undertaking in which I engage is done using insight and methodology which is unconventional. Whether it was establishing intangible asset collateral enhancement in the 90s or whether it’s optimizing international trade imbalances to realign national economic engagement, if you are working with me or with the organizations I lead, you’re not experiencing convention. That’s a given. So why in the world would you seek to understand something which you know defies convention with conventional questions? The reason you can’t find what motivates me is not because I’m not motivated. It’s because I’m motivated by values which you may not recognize. The reason why we find untraditional opportunities for business creation is because we look at the world through intangible asset lenses – lenses we’ve yet to meet any other organization who can use or even comprehend. The reason why we’ll work with governments for years without monetary consideration is because we believe in building ecosystems in which business can develop – not in taking resources from those who we know to be deficient in the capacity to fully and transparently engage.

“How can we make sure that our leadership can speak to the right people in the government?” I was asked by a diligent assistant of a business executive.

At once I felt compassion and grief. My impulse was to answer the only way I know how. In truth, the answer would be, “Have your leadership sit down with us for a few days and learn how we build trust. Then, have them go on a trip with us and experience our engagement methodologies as apprentices so that they can have mastery of skills built on experience.” However, what was being sought was a short answer. “Talk to this person.” “Address this topic”. And, yes, in expediency, you may get an outcome that you recognize as satisfactory but you’ll never get the full taste of what would be possible if you don’t change You – the questioner – to recognize that life’s answers are lived and experienced – they’re not on a two dimensional piece of paper.

Which leads me to the fascination of the story at the beginning of this post – in its modern incarnation – Cinderella. What I find fascinating about this story is the fact that, in truth, the story is more about the epistemology of inquiry than it is about a rags-to-riches transformation. You see, in every incarnation, the protagonist is beautiful. She was not made beautiful by looking like the others. In every version, she is a hard worker who overcomes adversity in ways that build envy and derision. And in every version, convention loses as there’s only one foot that fits the shoe. Anyone who has shopped for shoes with a woman knows that the idea that there’s only one shoe for one woman’s foot knows the delusion in the story. Women, of all people, can muster the illusion of things fitting better than men can ever do (O.J. Simpson notwithstanding). No, the point is that true transformation can only be achieved when the mode of inquiry opens up to an unconsidered possibility. And that, my friends, is a fairy tale that needs to be retold again.

The Bismarck Conspiracy

29 March 2011, 0500 GMT

Heading: 5.22˚; Distance: 45 Miles; Winds: 8 knots NNW; Barometer: Falling

Some days just deserve remembering. So it is that I depart from my intended post to share with you an account of my crossing of Straits at the eastern edge of the Bismarck Sea between Tokua, East New Britain and Namatani, New Ireland in the Independent State of Papua New Guinea.

Courtesy of unpaid royalties to the customary landowners in Kavieng, the airport was closed. One charter company could fly us into Namatani but couldn’t manage a plane in the morning to get us back. One charter company had all its planes in service or being serviced in Brisbane. And no helicopters were available out of Rabaul. If we were going to make it to take part in Custom in Konos, we were going by boat. The boat was the Fire Fly – a 22’ open fiberglass boat with a 45hp outboard.

We landed in Rabaul and went across to the Ropopo Beach Resort to meet the Fire Fly. No boat. I walked down to the beach to make my habitual visit to the coral snakes which frequent the shallows off the coast of East New Britain and, instead of snakes I saw thousands of small fish feeding in the tepid water, darting en masse at once in one direction and then the next. Twenty feet off-shore, the glassy surface was punctuated by the occasional flying fish learning how to flout destiny but for a moment.

The Fire Fly came late, fully laden with locals seeking transport across to the St. Georges, a small collection of islands in the Straits. Our host sternly clarified that ours was to be a charter and sent them skipping across the eight miles to deposit their fares and return for us. As I watched the wake of the boat disappear on the water line, I could see massive afternoon cumulus clouds darkening over the distant New Ireland mountains. Still waiting, the deluge began its afternoon deposit long before the Fire Fly re-emerged speeding towards our impatient lot.

“You may need these,” Theresa said as she handed out recently acquired rain coats.

Securing our overnight cargo under well worn tarps and heavy plastic, we climbed aboard and slowed across the luxuriant coral in reverse until we were well beyond risking propeller and reef. Turning north, the engine snarled to life and we lit out across the water.

The Bismarck Sea holds the bluest water I’ve seen on Earth. Even with the sky shrouded in afternoon storm clouds, to look into the Bismarck is to look into a Utopian past long before seas were choked by the despoiling of humankind. These waters once embraced humanity’s oldest persistent cultures; entombed many Japanese, Australian, and American combatants (and their death machines) during the Second World War; and, now, once again were resplendent in deep azure. The white spray from the outboard launched hundreds of flying fish – now quite a bit larger as we left the shoreline – for their mature flights lasting from seven to ten seconds and transiting thirty to forty meters at an altitude of half a meter above the water. Life, in small scale was awake.

I have not seen marlin feeding in a pack before. On the occasional fishing show that I watch with Zach, I’ve seen an angler straining against a lone magnificent fish who, in panic launches from the sea in desperate defiance. But, in a flash, about twenty minutes into our crossing, a school of the mighty hunters were dancing – their great spears presaging the majestic fish as they pierced the surface in a feeding frenzy evidenced at times with smaller prey visible in their hungry mouths. Enchanting. This was worth the wait.

The seas roughened as we neared the St. Georges with the hull of the boat slapping the surface sending a hot sea spray across the boat and its occupants. And then, as soon as it roughened, in the tidal shadow of the Islands, it once again pacified into a pond.

Beyond the St. Georges, the inevitability of the burgeoning storm was apparent. Trying to circumnavigate the wall of rain would add hours to the lateness of our journey and would take a toll in fuel that, alas, exceeded our provisioning. So, steady at the tiller, we made for the wall.

And then They came. First, about fifty yards to port, three dolphins broke the surface. Soon another five and then several off starboard. We were in the middle of a multitude of the playful mammals as they darted and leapt all around the boat. The driver started a staccato foot stomp at the back of the boat and, with the stomps several dolphins would launch themselves into the air. He, in some communication beyond my grasp, was encouraging them to join us on our transit and they, filled with exuberance obliged. And then, cresting the water once again on the port side were massive porpoises, their giant dorsal fins slicing the water in advance of their graceful arc punctuated by tail splashes.

“We don’t see porpoises often – certainly not like this,” Byron commented.

All around us – abundant life – all racing for the storm.

They knew that intelligence dictated going underwater when confronted with airborne tempests. We didn’t have the option. The heavens opened and were most generous. The best of Chinese waterproofing did little but slow the ingress of water and, in a moment, water resistant utility was substituted for portable sauna as precipitation and perspiration locked in mortal combat inside of a plastic suit. There is a moment when resistance is futile and you surrender to forces well beyond any semblance of control. Being in an open boat in torrential rain happens to be precisely one of those moments. I reflected on how deeply I cherished my life and the richness of experience that has graced my days. I found myself celebrating the absence of flight without which the sky and sea’s bounty could not have been apprehended on this day. I found myself lost in the scale of the present where my pulse of life was merely one beat in the orchestra of All. The storm, the sea, the wildness all drenched me through.

Thirty minutes from our destination, the storm relented and gave way to late afternoon blue patches and broken clouds. A frigate bird drifted in the currents coming off the land. A freshly washed New Ireland materialized all around us and we raced the coming dark.

Three more hours of driving to Konos to share Custom with over 200 people from Simberi, Tabar, and Tatau Islands… but that’s another story for another day. For today, my celebration of sensing life is sufficient and we’re all wealthier for it.

Calling All Pens

True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy , Act I, Scene II
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1839

The ink of a scholar is holier
Than the blood of a martyr.

Attributed to the Prophet Muhammad PBUH

On January 8, 2002, then President George W. Bush signed the “No Child Left Behind” law. Like dogs to the Pavlovian bell, governors across the country, together with state legislatures rushed to embrace either this clarion call for quality education for all Americans. Either that or they succumbed to the monetary inducement to “play ball” in which Federal funds could be used to offset dwindling state resolve to support education. Um, let’s see, I wonder which one of these might have been the case?

So when Wisconsin Governor and Tea Party darling Scott Walker decided to pick a battle on how to deal with the state’s budgetary profligacy, he ripped a page from the playbook of Pope Paul IV in 1559. After all, if you want to build an electorate who will warmly embrace nostalgic eras like, oh, let’s say the Inquisition; the place to start is by rooting out the evils unleashed by the “freedom of inquiry”. Anyone betting on how soon we’ll see the forests of Wisconsin cut down to stack around the stakes to rid the state of heretics? And, not to be outdone, governors and legislatures across the country and around the world are deciding that tough economic times call for drastic measures so, what better place to save than silly incidentals like education?

Now, before every NEA blogger places me on their most-favorite-blog referral, beware. Ever since organized education sold out to standardized testing and propped up pathetic attempts to show education metrics to justify their existence, they put their own tinder at their own feet. You see, long ago Educators abandoned their destiny for an Industrial Output model where “passing” and “minimum competency” replaced excellence at most turns. And, while there’s still room under the bus, parents, in their quest to “make ends meet” decided that schools were more daycare than life preparation and relegated discipline failures to schools while they were off selling their hours in pursuit of an American dream.

Prior to the storming of the Bastille in 1789, over 700 authors, printers and book dealers were reportedly held for sedition, radical thoughts and inciting rebellion in a legacy of the 1550s banner decade for edicts (the 1551 Edict of Chateaubriant and the 1557 Edict of Compiegne) setting forth death penalties for heresy and the burning of nobelwomen at the stake for promoting the reading of books. After all, when autocratic governments wish to control masses, their first line of defense is to attack the educated class and restrict the role of schools. It worked for the Church in the Dark Ages, in France in the 17th century and it will work for Wisconsin in 2011. Unless, a few people realize that both the governor and the educators are engaged in a meaningless Quixotic battle while the real tragedy goes unaddressed.

To be clear, most states (including Wisconsin) are in the pickle they’re in at the moment because of illiteracy. During bumper crop years of state surpluses; state pensions, union pensions, and the like were signed away to charlatans and swindlers who promised safe investment vehicles which would allow state coffers to fill on the heady markets. In the run up to 2008 and buoyed by the insanity of political forces in Washington who saw equity markets as the cure for all social programmatic ills, massive allocations were made to investments which were NOT investments. Why would state funds fall for such pathetically transparent schemes? Simple, because not a single legislature in the country has a modicum of financial literacy sufficient to make fiduciary decisions informed of all the facts. And we don’t have the literacy because we have failed to educate.

Our current education system is a product of an industrial system gone horribly wrong. Students are programmed to be consumables in an industrial system. Why is it that universities are rated based on their job placement success rather than their graduates’ contributions to the world? Why is it that we choose math and science as our flagship socialized priorities? Was this mandate a product of aspiring to greatness or were we playing out the madness put in motion by the Reagan Administration’s spectre of the Japanese dominating the world? Hey, Gipper, if you’re out there – Japan was never something to fear…. ignorance was and is!

I have been dealing with civil and criminal acts committed by mining companies – listed on the Toronto, Australian, and London stock exchanges – for the past several months. I have also been dealing with reporters who are conducting investigations into these abuses. Ironically, NO compliance arm of any of the markets in question have provided ANY evidence whatsoever in enforcing material disclosure requirements (and relevant compliance failures of the companies in question) which will directly and adversely impact the value of shares traded on their exchanges. Market regulators and the media believe that places like Mongolia and Papua New Guinea are “too far away” to really get a handle on the story. Mind you, they’re not too far away to rob and swindle. But they are too far away to warrant regulatory compliance oversight. If educated, they would realize that these countries are on the way to even more remote places where regulated markets flourish. They would realize that in both countries, English competency outstrips multi-lingual competency in their own countries. In the countries in concern, walking governments through basic agreements in which publicly traded corporations have ripped sovereignty from the hands of the country – in executed agreements – begins not with a sense of outrage but rather, incredulity. “Are you saying that they’re misleading us?” is a refrain that has echoed in every corner. “No,” I respond, “I’m saying that they’re stealing from you and insuring that you and your country remain impoverished.”

And then, the bough breaks.

Impoverished people, oppressed by the licensed tyranny of market forces which steal resources and leave no benefit for the communities, rise up and demand that their voices be heard and their interests served. Some countries chose to nationalize their assets and, in vindictive reprisal, rating agencies like Moodys, S&P, and Fitch down-grade the country as being “risky”. As long as you are being robbed and don’t complain, you’re an acceptable risk. Stand up against abuse and you’re “too unstable”. Some countries acquiesce and invite unfettered corruption while multi-lateral organizations stand aside and lament the “Dutch Disease”. And, We the People, stand by and shake our heads as bombs rain down on countries where, in a single day, we blow through more money in the name of national defense than we spend in a year in education in most states.

You see, it’s all related. Cartoon characters in State Houses, incensed labor marching in the streets, bombs in Libya. At the core, we have failed to truly hold up the standard of unfettered Freedom of Inquiry. Educators have too often abandoned their post of moral leadership insisting that a child prepared for a complex world needs excellence in communication and civil engagement – not monotonous drills for standardized tests. Public figures have succumbed to public opinion narcissism where short term is measured in CNN-years (7 times faster than dog – or is it Fox? – years). Market regulators have focused on post facto gotcha rather than preempting crisis. And We the People have elected to Twitter about Charlie Sheen.

Now, I know, this post has required some of you to actually re-read sentences. Some of you have actually opened up another browser window to do real-time Babel Fish on my selection of words. And, as I sit in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, that sight makes me laugh. For, in the end, my point is to preserve the hope that one day, we’ll regain the capacity to think in paragraphs and prose, we’ll regain the capacity to debate in rich metaphors and hyperbole, and that, We will once again value the inalienable curiosity of the human spirit and empower it with a rich, educated foundation.

Transforming our Economy At Last - Our World’s New Beginning

A speech delivered on March 17, 2011 in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia
By Dr. David Martin, Executive Chairman of M•CAM Inc
Batten Fellow, University of Virginia

O Lord our Heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings, and Lord of lords, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth and reignest with power supreme and uncontrolled over all the Kingdoms, Empires and Governments; look down in mercy, we beseech Thee, on these our American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves on Thy gracious protection, desiring to be henceforth dependent only on Thee. To Thee have they appealed for the righteousness of their cause; to Thee do they now look up for that countenance and support, which Thou alone canst give. Take them, therefore, Heavenly Father, under Thy nurturing care; give them wisdom in Council and valor in the field; defeat the malicious designs of our cruel adversaries; convince them of the unrighteousness of their Cause and if they persist in their sanguinary purposes, of own unerring justice, sounding in their hearts, constrain them to drop the weapons of war from their unnerved hands in the day of battle!

Be Thou present, O God of wisdom, and direct the councils of this honorable assembly; enable them to settle things on the best and surest foundation. That the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that order, harmony and peace may be effectually restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety, prevail and flourish amongst the people. Preserve the health of their bodies and vigor of their minds; shower down on them and the millions they here represent, such temporal blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come.


Reverend Jacob Duché
Rector of Christ Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
September 7, 1774, 9 o’clock a.m.

Two hundred thirty seven years ago this invocation set in motion the First Continental Congress and set the world alight in a war against perceived tyranny and oppression. Two hundred thirty seven years later, we gather this evening in a world alight in a war against perceived tyranny and oppression. Kneeling under the illumination shining through the south window of this hall, resplendent in the light of morning, the Rector of Christ Church of Philadelphia could not have imagined that his prayer, so passionately constructed, would, in two centuries find itself more prophecy than supplication.

Just this past week, China re-emerged after 500 years as the world’s leading producer economy while, we the People for whom this prayer was spoken, find ourselves in a relentless struggle to “defeat the malicious designs of our cruel adversaries.” However in a tragic irony, this time maliciousness and unrighteousness are not directed to foreign powers but at our own countrymen. Having fled the rod of the oppressor, we have, in larger part, been seen as the oppressor. Rather than assembling in honor for the “best and surest foundation” we instead have scorned wisdom for the tyranny of intolerance.

Once again, now in the light of the waxing Lenten moon, I would like us to consider our precise condition so that we can find a path to a supplication more fitting a New Beginning. Tonight, I would welcome you to consider the animating values of ourselves, our businesses, our nation and our world and recognize that it is in this consideration in which we can reconcile ourselves to our callousness and find a path towards a More Perfect Union.

Earth Dwellers to Resource Conquerors
On the waning notes of the prayer which opened this Hall, Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations described the Earth as not our sanctuary and home but rather the compilation of commodities to exchange and consume. The Earth and its “resources” were objects of dominion and Labor – not human engagement and stewardship – serving as the determinant of value. In this view, and in its present manifestation, we find ourselves in persistent conflict to lay claim to perpetually lower “cost” resources and labor to leach profit from every source. In the late 1990s as we encouraged profit maximization by reducing domestic employment, did we profit or did we create an ecosystem where our own citizens have atrophied in their capacity to produce and contribute to a national wealth and identity? We prayed for nurturing care but decided that University of Chicago shareholder value maximization was supreme. Rather than seeing ourselves as stewards of an ecosystem, we sought piety through blood. Is it then, any wonder that the words “human trafficking” and “conflict metals” are as synonymous in our day as slavery and plunder were in 1774?

Sanguinary Purposes vs. Effectual Harmony
In the formation of the current Federal Reserve at the turn of the last century, we frequently recall the debate about States’ rights of currency. We remember William Jennings Bryan and J.P. Morgan variously advocating for agrarian interests in state currency and silver vs. gold and industrial credit, respectively. However, we spend little time considering the centrality of mortality in our Federal Reserve system. After all, it was the life insurers – like Aetna and Metropolitan Life – who provided life insurance premiums for the capital formation of our current monetary system (a practice persisted to this day). It was, after all, the cash compiled by insurers from 1905 to 1913 which provided the first “fixed income” capital to buy the first Federal Reserve debt. To this day, life insurance premiums and pensions require, as “safe investments” the very debt that animated the Fed’s founding. As founding members of Reserve Corporation and persistent members of its Board of Directors, what’s in your wallet is merely a debenture against your very mortality. And, given that most Americans die in debt, there’s no wonder why the dictum of near compulsory “death benefits” are structured to repay, in death what we failed to honor in life.

While we have layered equity markets, financial engineering, celebrated monetary hegemony on top of our modern, self-congratulatory assessment of our now threatened economic power, at what point in history did we actually stop and ask ourselves the considered question: “Does money based on actuarial management of Death serve as the best metric of performance or success?” Is a business the sum of returns to shareholders or is it an organizing endeavor which values the participants in a community; which builds value through employment; which spreads value through exchanges within and between communities; and, which engages value in practicing exemplary stewardship?

Expedient Blessings to Indebted Consumption
When the Reverend implored the Almighty for “expedient” blessings, is it conceivable that expediency and blessing are in existential tension? “Truth and justice, religion and piety prevailing and flourishing”? In this time, in fact our greatest perceived threat is coming from religion and piety prevailing and flourishing. The challenge for us is that, in our focus on our own interests, we failed to engage with our neighbors and, in the vacuum, other religions – built on strict adherence to the values of community and ideology over the individual and built on community values rather than isolated consumerism – flourished. While we can debate on the proximate causes for piety-animated extremism, there is no question that poverty is a fuel for radicalization and we were too busy swiping our credit cards using our houses as ATMs to recognize that we were contributing to the animation of our shared greatest fears.

Friends, we now live in the full measure of the prayer that opened this hall. Our manifold successes remain bound to tyranny and oppression. Our technological advances have been energized by resource exploitation which ravages countries and spreads the scourge of poverty-fueled reprisals to our shores.

Make me an instrument of peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

In the Industrialization of the past century, we observed and were willing participants in an economic system which detached the value of business and human endeavors from the ecosystem, integral values, and a sense of perpetual stewardship not only for ourselves but for future generations. Rather than aligning capital and its flow to productivity, we sought extraction optimization and celebrated the same as the pinnacle of celebrity achievement.

We are more than the sum of this failing indebted currency metric.

What does the New Economy look like? How will we recognize it when it shows up? What can we do to align our efforts with its manifestation?

Productive Currency
Money is an artifact of value transfer – not the value itself. Since we stopped using metal coinage, this has been the case. Experiments in new currency – including Utah’s recent vote to reinstate gold and silver as legal tender – are emerging at community, State and international levels. Intrinsic to all of these is absolute commitment to reconnecting the exchange with productive engagement. Currency is a call option on future goods, services or interactions – not a draft against looming debt and mortality.

Collaborative Access
Humanity shares some basic traits – not the least of these is the shared impulse to be creative. Whether it’s the Inca pumping water up a mountain 800 years ago or the survivor of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, when water is where we don’t want it, we move it. From the farmer who goes from sharpened stick, to plow, to no-till agriculture to the metallurgist who goes from cast iron to single atomic thickness gas phase deposition of conductive materials, when we see our world, our impulse is to change it. This shared impulse must serve as the core for accessing active participation in the global exchange of value. Rather than seen as a commodity of labor, we will succeed when creative collaboration is a calling card equally valued regardless of race, creed or geography.

Transparent Accountability
Value is an inclusive experience which counts the all-in consequence of our activities. Coal isn’t free. It costs a forest, epochs of time, pressure, heat and space and our assumption that its value starts at its digging denies its replacement value. Metals don’t show up in ingots or bars but they start with a dynamic earth that quakes, heaves, and transforms phase and state. From materials to our final interaction with goods, services and experiences, accounting for ALL components of our experience is the only way we’ll manifest a viable economy for all. Poverty’s blight must be transformed from the absence of things to the willful disengagement from communities and networks. Wealth must take on the stewardship mantle where the best of us are the ones who remove the most barriers of access for the masses.

This is happening now.

So, in the waning hours of this evening, let us consider a new prayer for the New Economy.

Led by humanity’s Unquenchable Light,
We pledge…
… to live as stewards of our sanctuary Earth;
… to honor the inalienable value of the creativity intrinsic to all;
… to orient our actions to the removal of barriers of access and opportunity;
… to define our wealth by our character rather than our artifacts; and,
… to fully live in abundant grace in a spirit of tolerance and mercy;
So that we, dwellers of Earth, may be embraced in the illumination of everlasting glory.
Amen

Article III, Section 3 or Just AIG

Anytime I hear that any government bailed out entity is acting in “the best interest of taxpayers” I smell a rat! When I hear AIG (NYSE: AIG) say that it wants to buy back “assets” from Maiden Lane II, I find myself wishing that the framers of the U.S. Constitution had anticipated the government declaring war on its own currency when Article III, Section 3 was drafted. When I find out that the New York Federal Reserve is actually not sure that it wants to take AIG’s offer of $15.7 billion in cash (yes, U.S. Dollars – THAT cash) in exchange for toxic assets which nearly cratered the company and the country just two years ago I lament for the absence of any public media capacity to actually tell the country what’s really happening.

Let’s review for a moment. The U.S. Treasury – that vaunted entity that is responsible for the financial assets of the United States – owns about 92% of AIG. For the record, that’s a controlling interest and, we, the people, allegedly are being served by the management thereof. The New York Federal Reserve, the Managing Member of Maiden II, together with the collateral agent, The Bank of New York Mellon, are actually the “owners” and “managers” of Maiden Lane II. You will recall, recently the Federal Reserve (a corporation having NO public accountability and having no interest in the taxpayers’ interests) authorized the purchase of approximately $600 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. Now I know this will come as a shock but this purchase explicitly violated the rules of independence set forth in the AIG bailout – specifically violating provisions of independence required under the Fed’s custodial role. By accepting AIG’s purchase of the Maiden Lane II assets, the Fed would receive an estimated $1.5 billion profit for selling securities for $0.50 on the dollar.


But, you’d have to be a real loser to spend this much time actually READING the evidence of the cover-up to know any of this. However, in the interest of demonstrating just how much a geek I am, I decided that there was a bigger rat behind the ludicrous statement being made by U.S. Treasury-owned AIG. So I went down the rabbit hole of the CUSIPs (the Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures) which are the records of the assets actually toxic enough to qualify for bailout but now so desirable to own that the U.S. Treasury has decided that holding them is MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN HOLDING U.S. CURRENCY! While I won’t bore you with all of the assets, I wanted you to see exactly the “quality assets” which are better than the U.S. dollar according to the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Mortgage Obligations originated by…

Countrywide Home Loans Servicing LP's

IndyMac Bank, F.S.B. - Chapter 7 bankruptcy

Newport Management Corporation

Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Deutsche Bank National Trust Company


Yes, you’re reading this correctly. Assets of failed, bailed out, and civilly indicted (soon to include the prospect of criminal charges) banks are officially “better” investments than cash. And this determination is made by the organization responsible for maintaining the quality of U.S. cash! I wish you could make stuff like this up but reality is far more tragic than fiction could ever imagine.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “Certainly someone somewhere out there knows what they’re doing,” I wish I could provide you some solace. However, in a painful experience this week with one of North America’s most respected news entities, I found out how anemic fiscal literacy is in our media and how horrific their attention span is to outright fraud. So, for the record, let’s simplify it and see if you can use your forwarding capacity on your browser to make sure others you know find out the simple truth.

In the public announcement made by the U.S. Treasury (owner of AIG), the Treasury has said that its own money is less valuable than toxic mortgage securities. The New York Fed, actually having to reflect on the sales offer – the same Fed that bailed out the Treasury for QE2 (the politically correct term for certifying counterfeit currency as the sale was NOT backed by an independent buyer thereby defying the “willing buyer” requirement for an independent transaction) – seems to agree that holding toxic mortgages is better than holding the dollar. And, every major financial media outlet, in their pathetic pandering to the propaganda that led us down the primrose path to Maiden Lane, regurgitates the LIE that this is good for the American taxpayer and the U.S. government. Ah, for the good old days of clear cut treason when people sought to destroy the country with tired trinkets like muskets and cutlasses. Now, treason is death by a thousand paper cuts of unread securities agreements written to blind the public in plain sight.

For years I pointed out that the 2008 collapse was not a “housing market” crisis but the fully forecast collapse of housing market financials when houses were used as ATMs and real estate became the basis for reckless consumer credit. Well, now we’ve got it. We really have the 2008 crisis that didn’t happen then. In this wholesale robbery from the public and in the broad light of fraud, the New York Fed, the Treasury, and their puppet AIG, are now solidly collapsing the dollar. I guess the Utah legislature is prescient in their decision to move towards a state-minted legal tender gold and silver standard. Because, what’s in your wallet is the ghost of a system built in 1913 which has now fully failed.

While most of the time, I end my blog posts with a “happy ending” I can assure you that this one doesn’t end happy. It ends with a warning. When we construct the next economic system, accountability and transparency not only will require an informed and educated population but it will require people like you, having read this, and having independently checked the accuracy of what I’ve reported, taking the next step and forwarding this to everyone you know who has a dollar or who has ever used a dollar so that, “no one saw it coming” can’t be said this time.

So go ahead, take a challenge from a Virginian who had the courage to actually call for Liberty and hit the "send" button. If a tea tax got in the craw of colonies - let's see if you know treasonous behavior when you see it and then, let's see if you do something about it!

Polarity of Insight – Staring at the Sun

When you grow up with a father who is an astronomer, you learn about optics long before others in your grade. As a little boy, I remember creating a pinhole camera in an attempt to see large sunspots or partial eclipses. I remember going to Rio Hondo Community College and using some of the telescopes to project images of the sun on white surfaces to resolve solar mysteries without blinding my beguiling eye. I also remember loving to start fires with magnifying glasses but that was not part of this story or part of my better childhood behavior so, enough about that! I remember driving across the desert and watching my brother Dan at a gift shop taking a pair of sunglasses and, while looking through them, turn them 90 degrees to see if they were polarized pronouncing to all of us younger siblings that this “polarization” was essential for some fantastical reason. From optics to audio, Dan could explain the importance of things with such a passion that you actually thought them to BE important. And so, at a National Park gift shop somewhere in the southwestern United States, I paid an extra couple dollars and got “better” vision. That I lost the glasses at the Grand Canyon is merely cause for you, the reader, to have great sympathy for me and then imagine what the loss of such value must have had on my psyche!

In collaboration with my M•CAM, Constellation, and other colleagues, I have revisited the notion of polarization realizing that this phenomenon is replete with natural philosophy and wisdom. Unwilling, however, to remain wed to conventional dimensions of polarization in which one filters perpendicular reflected light to reduce glare and sharpen edges, I would like to consider the values of the principles of polarization with infinite orthogonality.

In his most current work, my friend and colleague Richard David Hames explores the “civilizational worldview” in an epistemological criticism of unconscious sense-making assumptions. Using the context of global environmental changes, we work to see what ethnographic impulses can be deciphered when observing the SAME observed phenomenon by systematically shifting our observational vector. While we might, in the Occidental Lens, see crisis in climate change; in our Sinic Lens, we can see that the melting ice may be a godsend to those living systems that have been long starved for methane. By seeing things through different lenses, we find not only new perspectives on the same phenomenon but we… are you ready for this?.. might actually have sentient awareness of other facultative symbiots and see ourselves in-scale rather than in the glare of our own reflective Klieg egos.

Over the course of the past week, I have worked with a number of people to begin understanding the application and integration of Integral Accounting using the hexahedral optics (aka - a cube prism). Pulling a random article from a newspaper, I have asked people to annotate every word, phrase or concept in each of the six orthogonal dimensions of IA. An example is below. I am using a Reuters article entitled “US Corn Belt Braces for Major Flooding in Spring”.

In 2008 (Custom & Culture: time), rains (Commodity: water) pounded (Custom & Culture: evocative of destruction) the northern Midwest (Commodity: land; Custom & Culture: place) from early June into July (Custom & Culture: time) and caused (Knowledge: hydrology) tributaries into the vast Mississippi River watershed (Technology: natural water conveyance) to overflow (Commodity: abundant water), flooding (Custom & Culture: evocative of destruction; Well-being: loss of employment, land, shelter) some tens of millions of acres of cropland (Commodity: land).

Grain prices (Money: grain sales) soared (Custom & Culture: evocative of abundance) during the summer of 2008 (Custom & Culture: time) on fears of damage (Custom & Culture: social response; Knowledge: anticipation of consequence; Well-being: (-fear)) to the bellwether U.S. crops. Iowa farmers (Custom & Culture: class of labor) received nearly $1.1 billion in insurance payments (Money: insurance) in 2008.

Next, take the time to observe each artifact of integral value and shift your optics. When viewed on a global scale of a need for fresh water, are pounding rains destruction or essential to recharge fresh water? And if we take this view, are there pathways which we could imagine which would take the devastation into a new value by using technology, new social narratives, or alternative values on land-use? Are there people or places around the world where knowledge could be shared to turn a narrative from animations of fear, destruction and loss into opportunity? Did anyone win? Did anyone lose? Could any of those dynamics been altered?

By taking the time to apply the polarizing optics of value dimensions into something as simple as a CNBC article, one can also begin to resolve the fulcrum around which the narrative could change. In the story above, fear drove up prices. In the story above, farmers benefited from fear while insurers lost. In the story above, the consumer lost all the way around. Without considering the single dimension consequences in multiple, orthogonal perspectives, we animate a fatalistic, helpless worldview in which there are only winners and losers.

A challenge for the week: pick a story in your newspaper or favorite on-line media and look at it through the six dimensions of Integral Accounting. Then, tilt the image 66 degrees and look at every artifact through one other lens. Repeat at least two more times. See if you are inspired to ask, “Why didn’t someone see it this way?” See if you’re inspired to learn more about something you would have otherwise glanced over. See if you’re inspired to go through your day with a little less of your own reflected glare and a little more direct Light.

Pushing the Elephant in the Room

Addressing an international audience of some of the world’s most influential CEOs, Rose Mapendo recounted her life experience as the recipient of the greatest forms of cruelty dealt at the hands of brutal, violent men. Listening to her presentation beginning with the haunting languid melody of the song of hope and forgiveness, the same one she sang for months as she heard the screams of the dying and the living tortured with physical and sexual abuse, one could not help but be transported to the anguish-filled nightmare of East-Central Africa. At the end of her presentation, the chorus of responses from the audience was singular.

“What can we do?”

When a room full of global industry leaders hear Rose’s impassioned plea for justice and peace and respond with a “what can we do?” impulse, I wonder which part of the orgy of consumer enterprise blinds so many from the recognition that it was the institutions celebrated as idealized titans of industry that are those who maimed, killed, raped, and tortured the very ones whose voices echo in the notes of Rose’s song. Do we ignore the fact that between 1950 and 1989, the U.S. delivered in excess of $1.5 billion in military equipment to the region? Under the sterilized name of Foreign Military Assistance – a code name for our subsidizing of U.S. defense contractors’ sales around the world – much of the military hardware came with our own name stamped on the weapons and munitions. And we are not alone. Chinese and European firms, with full knowledge of their ultimate genocidal use, continue to authorize the weaponization of conflicts which serve to distract local communities while their mineral, gem, and energy wealth is stolen.

But, to honor the question Ms. Mapendo asked, “What is the source, not the symptom of our violence?” we must confront a topic that is NOT addressed in sterile gatherings of global business executives. How many of us know the contribution of our own unconsidered consumption which funded the terror meted out to millions? Did we ask ourselves whether the imbalanced concessions provided to Chevron / Congo Gulf provided the liquidity that turned fossil fuels into human extinctions? Did we concern ourselves with the pension funds and investment banks that financed the oil, diamond, and metals businesses whose disproportionate wealth extraction created feudal despotism that erupted into genocide? When did any of us – from London to Toronto to New York to Australia to Hong Kong – actually demand that publicly listed companies in whom we invested report MATERIAL events – including known human rights abuses to local communities and expediency payments (the politically correct term for bribes) to “security” provided by governments or militias?

As the abolitionists of the 18th and 19th century faced the dehumanizing pragmatism of the profitability of slavery, in our modern economy, why do we refuse to see that genocide and abuse of human dignity are NOT relics of the past but utilities that give us cheap electronics, energy and extravagant luxuries? In a region with an estimated $26 trillion in energy, metals, agriculture potential, and other materials, why can’t we find any capital market that has the courage to stand up and say that, on our watch, humanity will refuse to create the economic disparities that lead to rebels deciding that shooting husbands and preserving wives, mothers, and daughters for sexual abuse and torture is “a good use of precious commodities like bullets?” With bilateral investment agreements with the U.S., Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and others, which citizen will stand up and be the voice that turns Rose’s painful lament into a chorus of humanity?

Let’s be clear. We continue to dishonor the plight of the death camp survivors in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the rest of the region when we refuse to face the fact that it is OUR inhumanity that fuels genocide. But for the cash supplied by Chevron, Congo Gulf Oil, Citibank, Telecel, Mobil, Group Damseaux, Tabacongo/Rothman, BAT, PLC, and others, violence wouldn’t be directed at the tribal conflict over the single digit percentages of revenues and profits extracted from the region. In countries where foreign investors must invest at least 70 percent of their capital in foreign currency – making local despotism and mercenary arming far more convenient for the agents of death – why can’t we see that our money supply robbed Rose of her husband, her home, and peaceful dreams? When scarcity is manufactured in the face of abundance, violence has ALWAYS been there. We cannot, for one moment, sit back in horror and anesthetize ourselves from the reality that we are the torturer.

When a Chinese gaming company buys a U.S. gaming company for several hundred million dollars, can we see in the fantasy war-game the actual violence that made the graphics processor optimized with metals from the anonymous dead? In a culture of business executives that applauds the miniaturization of genomics processors so that science can automate the synthesis of “life”, can we see that the components that run the computers and sequencers rely on the lives of real humans for whom clean drinking water is a luxury for less than 1 in 12 and where life expectancy is 47 years?

It is time to change the narrative. “Corporate Social Responsibility” is not enough. If we are going to be remembered for anything other than the scourges of immoral and unconsidered consumption, we must practice – and demand from all parties with whom we do business – an accountability that says that profits built on the dehumanization of others are no longer tolerated. And let’s be honest. The only reason why we don’t take the time to inform ourselves about the source of the metals in our iEverythings and mobileApp everything else is because we want to remain blind. In a world which could watch in rapt attention as Egypt collapsed and Libya consumed itself with blood, we don’t want to know that with knowledge comes responsibility. We call it a knowledge economy but we’ve actively chosen a path of ignorance. This must end.

Every stock exchange on the planet must institute a listing requirement requiring every listed company to comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in all business practices.

Every securities oversight authority must have a public reporting mechanism to enable transparency provided by local communities directly impacted by the businesses conducted by public companies.

Every public company must be required, at its annual meeting, to have local representation from the workers or landowners of every place where business is conducted.

Every pension fund and investment manager must represent and warrant (at pain of financial and International Criminal Court censure) that it confirms that no funds are used for the use of force to effectuate or optimize the conduct of business.

Too radical?

Tragically, in our present trajectory, the mournful song of a woman in a death camp is likely to join the massive choir of those whose songs have been extinguished until a few of us start singing a “sweeter song”.

Rose named her story “Pushing the Elephant” in honor of the traditional African story that teaches that, to move an elephant, one must act with others because a lone actor cannot push the elephant. I would suggest that Rose’s challenge is infinitely more difficult given our denial of the existence of the elephant.