A Corpse Wrapped in a TARP

“The bank-bailout part of TARP was an astounding success,” according to Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist.

And if you’re Moody’s or an employee thereof, you’re probably partying about the two year euthanizing of the Bush, Paulson, and Congressional stroke of genius that left taxpayers $100 billion in the hole, left the economy foundering, and has placed the Obama Presidency in reputational shambles. Because if people would have been held accountable for their actions, Moody’s (like Arthur Andersen before it) would have been shuttered, its executives fined or jailed, and we would have had a modicum of a chance to actually restore some faith in our economy. Few organizations, incentivized with bloated fees, were more directly in the line of culpability for the economic disaster than Moody’s, S&P and other rating agencies. And remember, the same government that authorizes their monopoly to prop up its own shareholder interests and bogus pension accounts, has given them exoneration for falsely promoting investment quality when none existed. A bigger bullet couldn’t have been dodged. So, good on ya’ Mark, as my Aussie friends would say. The fact that there’s still an economist at Moody’s is an “astounding” fact indeed.

While I know that I’ve been reminding us of the classics lately, this week cannot pass without reference to Plato’s Republic, Book I:

“Observe also what happens when they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just; moreover he is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is more apparent; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable--that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little but wholesale; comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private and public; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace-- they who do such wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit and interest.”

As I have spent the week with many friends in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia, I find myself an discontented consumer of this week’s report card on TARP. I was fortunate to be reading the companion document, the GOP’s Pledge to America and couldn’t help thinking that, if the GOP’s Pledge is connecting with anyone, he or she must be suffering from memory loss. Either that or he or she is incapable of being informed by Plato's Republic and its stern admonition against celebrating tyranny and injustice. It was the Reagan Administration that poisoned our innovation policy in the U.S. by turning the Patent Office of the U.S. into a forgery shop in an attempt to quell Japanese industrial threats thereby creating the illusion that we had an innovation-based economy. It was the Clinton and Bush administrations which created tax environments which made out-sourcing the path towards short-term profits. And it was the Bush Administration and a Republican Congress which failed to act on speculative credit practices while simultaneously reinforcing the incumbency of rogue rating agencies. It was conservative Congressional “home ownership” dogma that let Freddie and Fannie get intoxicated (the very entities now recommended for detox by their newly-converted, former dealers). While railing against government size, the GOP seems to be overlooking the fact that if they “right-sized” Washington, they would likely double unemployment. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for downsizing wasteful government but to say that these bureaucrats will find jobs in the private sector is delusional. Yes, there’s plenty of culpability on both sides of the aisle but, really? The Pledge is against the policies of just 3 years ago when its authors held sway.

Not surprisingly, I find myself haunted by Plato’s Republic.

This week injustice and tyranny did their level best. A country who once was the recipient of foreign aid in their time of need neglected their opportunity to reciprocate kindness to another country in need and robbed it of much needed international support. New information surfaced on a 1940’s Public Health program in which U.S. officials sanctioned the infection of women in Guatemala to study sexually transmitted diseases. The head of government from a mineral rich country was hosted by another in which a stock exchange has funded exploitation of people and their land. And the world continued its mad rush to buy gold before China makes its move in October integrating metal, and possibly energy, assets into its currency strategy.

However, this week the argument in Plato’s Republic was challenged by the bold moves of some great women and men. I was witness to a phenomenal woman who is fueling the fire that once led her to campaign for independence in Mongolia now continuing that campaign for the economic and social betterment of the now politically liberated country and its people. As I write this blog post, Brazil stands on the verge of the likely election of Dilma Rousseff – a woman who is no stranger to tyranny. She will have the singular opportunity to show the world what power can do if it’s tempered with the wisdom drawn from a tumultuous life. In many ways, her Presidency, if elected, may provide humanity a unique moment to contemplate the power of reconciliation and service beyond self. Whether she rises to this challenge awaits an election and then, true leadership. I worked with a dynamic woman who has risen to positions of great respect in financial and civil society in Papua New Guinea as we continue to foster transparency and accountability in gold mines littering the landscape and blighting the service of many. And I stood with a colleague in London as we press on towards the launch of a new day for energy paradigms that are suitable both for the planet and for people.

What we should gladly bury with TARP on this day of its demise is the acquiescence to squandered trust. The epitaph may be best written by Zandi. “Astounding”. And today we can all realize that, when the merits of corruption can only find the complicit co-conspirators to sing their praises, we’re actually at a good inflection point. Honorable women and men have been wise enough to call the robbery of the public exactly that - robbery. Possibility is upon us. A new narrative can be born. Take responsibility as a cloak of honor, not a burden. Embrace accountability as your character, not as duty. Liberate your mind and actions, and help those around you to do the same, and stand with the great women and men who are already changing our collective story.

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An Ox Cart and a Gordian Knot

The legend of Gordian Knot stands with other epic fables as a simple reinforcement of archetypal values. Telmissus, the Oracle of Phyrgia forecast that that the next man entering the city driving an ox cart would be king. Confirmed with the omen of an eagle landing on the cart, the peasant Gordias, father of Midas, was this man and became king. In gratitude to the gods, Midas tied the auspicious cart to a post with the Gordian Knot which was without identifiable beginning or end. Centuries later, in BCE 333, Alexander arrived in Phyrgia and found the enigmatic knot and, unwilling to be bested by the puzzle, drew his sword and cut the knot in two fulfilling yet another oracle prophecy that the man who would loose the knot would be a Great. With an auspicious thunderstorm accompanying Alexander’s cleavage of the knot the priests and oracles declared Alexander the future king of Asia.

In modern times, the Gordian Knot has become associated with last week’s blog post theme – namely an epic challenge stimulus which calls for heroic, forceful action. We celebrate the blade that splits asunder and he who wields the blade but we don’t examine the other elements of the legend – the oracles, the signs, and the knot.

On Thursday, my office hosted several would-be Alexanders. Like millions who have been lured to the sirens of “entrepreneurship” and “angel” or “venture” investing I was dealing with several people who were confident that they had devised the solution for things ranging from data encryption to energy to metals to specialized magnetic motors. Joining the chorus in our present lottery-odds Greek tragedy, they sang of solutions to great problems, the promise of riches from their respective technical blades. And, in a style befitting Shakespeare’s rendering of Greek tragedies, many were morose when confronted with the fact that their illusion of uniqueness and creativity was a function of insufficient knowledge of interconnectedness – not invention. Like the innovator heroes of our times, their focus was on the sword and its master – not on the oracle, the signs or the knot. By shifting their focus from the sword to the knot, we actually began a process of a collaborative destiny – kudos to some courageous souls that day.

We are presented with numerous challenges in our time. How do we power our world without toxifying our air and seas? How do we extract minerals without depleting and toxifying water and displacing communities? How do we finance creativity when it has no tangible artifact to have and to hold? How do we determine stewardship of shared resources in the commons? How do we enable endeavors without becoming slaves to reserve-based money? We are, in a word, vexed. In a fifty year economic experiment, we allowed subsidized models of entrepreneurship to be promoted as the keys to wealth creation but we failed to tell the truth about these models. Modern entrepreneurship cannot exist without preferential procurement from governments (the fuel that created the U.S. private equity funding base); preferential tax policy which incentivizes wealth to be placed “at risk” for unlimited upside benefit; subsidized, socialized research (bear in mind that taxpayers fund over 70% of the world’s basic research – not private industry); and an established merger and acquisition market – the fate of most venture backed companies. If any of these conditions are not fully present, incumbent models don’t work.

Market and greed sirens on the rocks engage in a macabre dance which includes “innovators” and “capital”. Buoyed by half-truths and the lure of disproportionate wealth for the few, tens of thousands are devastated when the myths are exposed but, unwilling to expose the fraud to which they succumbed, sit quietly while others follow the same path to disappointment and poverty of spirit (and checkbook). We are, as it was in Phyrgia, a people without the metaphoric leader or king.

However, an ox cart driven by a peasant is on the path. And if we can re-examine the Gordian Knot, we just may be able to create a different narrative.

First, the oracle. The last two years have demonstrated quite clearly that our current model doesn’t work. Evidenced by the recent small business economic development boondoggle promoted by the White House and Congress and its equally ill-conceived cousins in Europe, credit is NOT the problem – Customers (or the lack thereof) is. In our love affair with our projection of “free markets”, we choked off the engine of economic development which is revenue from buyers – even when the purchases represent preferential customer selection. Oh, now some of you free trade wonks out there will howl about how the market should be devoid of these contrivances and manipulations. However, your academic and “think tank” perches from which you criticize were funded by titans of industry who became thus by way of effective monopolies or subsidized markets. So get over your myopic amnesia and get real. We need value to be exchanged between customers and sellers – not indebtedness to tax-subsidized banking interests. And we know that collaboration (whether its called open innovation, crowd-sourcing, or partnership) models are evidencing greater value than the cold-war isolation from innovation enclosure models of the industrial past. In a world where proprietary price controls once gained their efficacy by managing scarcity, we now are in a world where collaborative efficiency in development, production, distribution, and reuse will be the fuel of profitable endeavors.

Second, the signs. The ox cart, the eagle, and the thunderstorm are intriguing and overlooked elements in the Gordian Knot legend. However we ignore them at our wisdom’s peril. The ox cart can be seen as a metaphor for trade and exchange across distances. The eagle can be seen as the collaboration and confirmation of nature. And the thunderstorm can be seen as a metaphor for the natural energy that comes from nature’s dynamism. In modern, Occidental minds, omens are seen as superstitious. However in communities who have a better understanding of nature, signs are appreciated as markers of time, signals for change, and motivators for community adaptation. Many times, they are rather detached from a religious, superstitious or “belief” impulse. Community and culture simply know that when one thing happens, it calls for a change in action. Which of our greatest perceived challenges could not be solved from a renewed appreciation for looking at all the signals, not just the ones that get broadcast from the avatars on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and Bloomberg? Why has humanity been given the opportunity to have several >7.0 magnitude earthquakes in a single calendar year? Is it to jeopardize our survival or is it an opportunity to learn? Why aren’t we studying why the 7.0 in Papua New Guinea involved no loss of life while the one in Haiti killed thousands? Why aren’t we letting the lessons be learned? And floods, desertification, energy shocks – all can be used as opportunities to learn and change behavior. None of this is possible if we see ourselves as “victims” looking for “hero saviors”.

Finally, the knot. What is notable about the knot is that it was tied as a symbol of gratitude and it was fashioned from living fiber. Quite possibly, the reason why Alexander couldn’t determine the beginning or end is because life had knit the two together. Any horticulturalist can tell you that certain plants and plant material actually seamlessly heal leaving their injury or graft undetectable. But what’s there to learn from the knot? Well, quite simply, it was constructed of multiple, living fibers. And here’s the key. We need to see innovation, capital, enterprise, trade and sustainability as an integrated ecosystem – not in isolation. Small business doesn’t NEED credit. Investors don’t NEED deal flow. To the contrary, we can take the artifacts of our isolation over the past 50 years and weave them into a network across which value can be exchanged by interconnected, inter-dependent efficiencies rather than scarcity based isolation. This means that every person who ever had an idea and wanted to take it to scale but failed, should be invited into a Gordian Trust. Every angel investor who ever put money into a deal (usually backing the person as much or more than the artifact) should be invited to place their deals into the Trust. And every researcher who was certain that just one more spin of creativity would have yielded a result should be invited to place their ideas into the Trust. Then, by explicitly interconnecting the seemingly disparate threads, an ecosystem could be built. This ecosystem would, from our analysis at M•CAM, have a present market value in monetary terms in excess of two trillion dollars based on what we know is in the public domain, sitting unused. And rather than ownership, every steward member of the Trust could participate as a common member of the trust dividing proceeds however they saw fit. Ironically, this would yield a structure that no blade could drive asunder and we just may solve – at long last – the real message in the myth. Maybe a knot, tied in homage to unanticipated success, has its finest destiny as a knot.

The ox cart is coming with an eagle flying in advance of the towering clouds…. FLASH!

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Dancing in a Barn…

“I need a hero, I’m holdin’ out for a hero ‘til the end of the night...He’s gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast, and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight…
He’s gotta be sure, and it’s gotta be soon, and he’s gotta be larger than life.”
- Jim Steinman and Dean Pitchford recorded by Bonnie Tyler

O.K., I’ll admit it. When I got the vinyl record of Footloose as soon as it was released in 1984, few things were more blood-pumping than to pop my home-recorded cassette copy of the album into the stereo of my fire engine red Plymouth Arrow (complete with a dragon hood ornament) and fly around the back roads of Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Windows down, I’d cruise past my horse-and-buggy driving Mennonite neighbors blasting this tune in hopes of letting someone know (even if was just the horse) that I was not going to be a conformist playing by anybody’s rules. By the way – same tape – Gloria (Laura Branigan, 1983) and Total Eclipse of the Heart (another Bonnie Tyler hit from 1982)! And in case you’re wondering – ABBA had its own tape!

As I waited for my flight in the US Airways Club in LaGuardia, I heard Anderson Cooper’s promotion of CNN Heroes awards. There was a great little piece on a young man – last year’s recipient – from the Philippines who created push cart classrooms to educate children throughout the country. “Send in your nominations,” was the admonition, “and then get ready to vote for your hero.”

I had come to New York on this trip for a number of reasons. I spent my morning meeting with a few folks who are looking a trying to deal with massive water contamination issues in the Rocky Mountain states where the oil and natural gas industries are dumping unimaginable quantities of water onto public lands. In the afternoon, I met with an exceptional couple who have grown a business from its humble start to a massive enterprise in seven years of hard work and tireless commitment. And then, in the evening I joined a few hundred fortunate souls in celebrating the opening of Ran Ortner’s Deep Water exhibition in Williamsburg – just across the bridge from the financial center of the expiring global empire.

Odysseus, Orpheus, Abraham, Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha, Achilles, Alexander the Great (did you ever wonder what happened to Alex the Mediocre or Al the Mundane?), Mother Theresa, Ronald Reagan, Osama bin Laden, Sarah Palin – pick your religion, culture, time, or insanity as the case may be and for some reason, we tell ourselves that we “need a hero.” Let “our” world collapse under our own greed and stupidity – as it has – and see a country like China actually see its fortune rising and suddenly, our spandex-caped superheroes like Tim Geithner, Chuck Schumer, and the horde of dysfunctional Congressional sycophant minions race to grab the mantle of bully-in-chief. What is it about our social value system which leads us to the pathologic addiction to seek heroes? Why is it that we seem to have a systemic incapacity to realize that what is needed is collective accountability and behavior adjustment? When will we have the courage to engage in anonymous change for a better manifestation of humanity?

I am reminded of a conversation I recently had with a dear friend regarding past lives. We were musing over the fact that most “past lives” aspirations seem to disproportionately claim ties to known figures. Few people recall being the village misfit. I’ve yet to meet the person who actually celebrates their past existence as an under-achieving, slothful dude at a pub who just drank his liver into oblivion. That’s it. Didn’t do a thing. Just coasted through a nameless existence and then, poof, died. Nothing. No, it’s far more interesting to be the person who stood in the rain with Joan of Arc, sword in hand, ready to do whatever was being done in the appropriately dramatically lit moment. It’s far more enchanting to have been Merlin’s alchemist. If we have sufficient humility, we realize that it’s pretentious to claim to BE Joan of Arc or Merlin but we certainly know that we were their right hand man or woman. Even better, we were their inspiration or muse! What’s even better is that many actually claim to have been mythical characters. I can’t wait to hear someone claim to be comedian Demetri Martin’s Paradoxataur – a mythical creature that exists only when you don’t believe it exists.

In St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City there’s a curiosity. If you go to the front of the church behind the altar, you see some of the most ornate wood carving in the place. In the Library of Congress, there’s a book cabinet with recessed hinges that are magnificent. In the Ming tombs near Badaling, five stories underground there’s a 10 ton stone door which swings effortlessly on a ball and socket pivot. At the Ha’amanga in the Kingdom of Tonga, three large stones are precisely placed to signify something very important that justified immense effort but has long been lost to time. And, in each one of these instances, the thing that stands out is that this unimaginable effort and mastery stands as evidence of greatness – anonymously.

As I watched Ran Ortner deftly glide around the gallery at the opening, I reflected on a conversation he, Adam, Colleen, and I shared previously. To understand how to paint his exquisite works, he took the time to understand HOW the masters painted. He wanted to know the chemistry of their oils and palettes. He wanted to know how restoration artists could reproduce centuries lost techniques. And then, through tireless experimentation, miles of canvas and gallons of nut, wood, and organic oils, he found HIS expression which now graces
the aesthetic of humanity alongside masterpieces of times before. Ran is not a hero. Rather, he’s an amazing role model of human discipline which confronts life with the humility of knowing that wisdom has come before and that the race against mortality is most delicious when lasting communications of wisdom can be shared.



Heroes are part and parcel of our reflex to see the world through the dramatic lens of crisis. We are not in an environmental or financial crisis. We are harvesting fruit long planted and entirely predictable. The fact that we’re the harvesting generation is not dramatic – it’s just the way things are. And we don’t need heroes. What we all are invited to do is realize that transformation happens not through Herculean bursts of strength. After all, the half-life of a reflex is only one quarter the time required to actually engage in cognitive response. Don’t believe me? Watch the squirrel on the road next time and see yourself in the mirror. Lasting transformation happens in the community accountability that recognizes that persistent performance – not panic – are animator, motivator and reward.

Bonnie, Laura, ABBA – I still groove to those tunes in the moments when the radio plays the flashbacks to the 80s. But like my cassette tapes and my Plymouth Arrow, we’ve outgrown this impulse addiction. But Kevin Bacon dancing alone in a barn doesn’t change a town. No, it takes everybody on the dance floor rockin’ a different tune. Let’s dance.

P.S. Thank you to the two contributors who actually shared information with InvertedAlchemists responding to last week’s challenge. See, there’s more than just a glimmer of hope for us all!

Sweet Little Lies

A record number of Americans now live below the poverty line. Four people lost their lives and hundreds were displaced by this week’s pipeline explosion in San Bruno. Two people lost their lives in Afghanistan during a protest of the threat of burning of sacred books. These are some of the facts that greeted humanity this week. And after we slowed down on the highway of life enough to create a traffic jam as we watched the stories unfold in disbelief, we passed another week with little more than a traffic jam. Next week, more headlines. Next week more cognitive traffic jams. Next week, more of…?

During the same week, violent clashes erupted in Guinea – the West African nation which is rich in aluminum and iron ore yet remains one of the most poverty ridden countries on earth with over 63% of the population officially under the poverty line according to UNICEF. The governor of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Sir Julius Chan was quoted this week in an interview by Radio New Zealand as saying, “We do not support the expansion of the mine [LIHIR just taken over by Newcrest] because we are not convinced that they are telling us the truth about the impact on the environment and the tailings dumped 150 meters down into the sea.” Marketed by Bloomberg Businessweek (August 30 – Sept 5, 2010) as “The Evangelist”, Thomas Kaplan was celebrated along with David Iben of Nuveen Investments (another Bloomberg hero) for their market savvy generating massive investment returns at the expense of thousands of people and generations of environmental destruction. At a recent meeting in Ulaanbaatar, I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Zorigt D., Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy of Mongolia and President Mr. Elbegdorj T. challenge a global audience to hold up a single example where a resource-rich country actually succeeded in aligning such prosperity with benefit to its people. The list, they both said, of failed experiments is quite long. However, the examples of success are isolated and short-lived.

Coming off the seven-week series on Integral Accounting, the headlines and celebrants of the past week were particularly poignant. Somewhere along the line, we’re going to find out that the pipeline in San Bruno had known problems and that it wasn’t “cost effective” to fix them. Just like it wasn’t cost effective to fix the bridge over the Mississippi prior to August 1, 2007. Somewhere along the line we’re going to find out that declaring a “war on poverty” is as effective as a “war on terrorism”. By picking an anonymous, de-humanized enemy, we can pretend to be doing something while accomplishing nothing substantive at all. Remember how well the “war on drugs” worked? Ask yourself how much we’re spending to “secure our borders” with Mexico and see if you can see why our reflexive response to things we don’t really care about changing is less than stellar in obtaining any outcome whatsoever.

Lyndon B. Johnson, during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964 declared “War of Poverty”. To be clear, this week, we surpassed the poverty level that was the impetus for the war. Mission accomplished? I think not. Richard M. Nixon declared a “War on Drugs” June 17, 1971. This week, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were sparring on whether Mexico was as bad as Colombia. Mission accomplished? I think not. In March of 1954, Joseph McCarthy declared “War on Communism”. A tired Fidel Castro told the Atlantic Magazine this week that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” Mission accomplished? Hardly. In fact the last bastion of communist economic and social planning is the bank from which our capitalism is currently over-drafted. And in a recent op-ed in the Huffington Post, State of the World co-founder Jim Garrison laments that the fact that the forces aligned to tackle climate change and global warming have failed in their mission.

So I was thinking about what one can learn from legacy of the summer of 2010. In the past four weeks, we’ve seen ourselves as a human race come face-to-face with the reality that our Wars On… responses have all failed. Iraq is no safer and Afghanistan is seeing escalation in violence. Aging infrastructure is crumbling and exploding while “Jobs Stimulus” money is being used for repaving over our rotten pipelines. Democrats and Republicans volley accusations about what to do about the economy while the G-20 leaders hang their heads in exhaustion facing the realization that none of the levers that they used to wield seem to work on the economic locomotive currently hurtling out of control. And central bankers can’t even find respite fly fishing in Wyoming as they know that new bank regulations won’t change the fundamental problem.

Wars appear to work when people are ignorant of all the facts. Wars appear to work when frenzy can replace facts. Wars appear to work when ideologues replace civil, respectful repartee with rhetoric. Wars appear to work when we accept the lies we are fed by the purveyors of propaganda. We’ve got to end the policy of accepting lies as explanations for the way things are. Bush era tax cuts didn’t create jobs and extending them won’t do a thing. Throwing money at road projects while sewers, pipelines, bridges and oil platforms rust and fail doesn’t stimulate the economy. Promoting “democracy” at the end of a gun barrel where ideologies have never valued individual freedom doesn’t get us closer to human rights. Celebrating mineral investment returns while seeing growing environmental degradation is NOT acceptable. Bloomberg should tell the other stories and see how they’re received. This past week, we highlighted one of the biggest tax abuses in the U.S. – the research and experimentation tax credit. For the past five years, the Internal Revenue Service has had evidence of massive abuses in this credit – they’ve even written internal memos about how abuse-prone it is – yet the Obama administration has the audacity of suggesting that making this permanent will “stimulate the economy and create jobs”.

To turn this around, we need to reclaim dignity and integrity. Beginning this week, tell the truth and expect the same in return. Beginning this week, if you see a bridge that’s rusted, write a note to the department of transportation. If you see profits being celebrated, take the time to look behind the numbers and see if that cheap aluminum in the airplane manufacturer’s product is coming from Guinea. Look at your investments in your retirement account. If you don’t know how the money is being made – FIND OUT! The only way lying works is if people like you don’t care enough to fact check what you’re being told. And if you start fact checking and sharing what you find, others will too. I challenge you to the following. Add one piece of information that you didn’t know about one of your investments to the end of this blog so that others can see it. One of two things will happen. Either none of you will rise to the challenge and thereby reinforce my point that we’re too lazy to care… or… some of you will do it and we’ll all be better for it. In the first instance, we’re still better off because when we know we don’t care, we actually are close to realizing that WE are where transformation needs to start. Let’s declare peace with truth and see if the warring impulse fades.

Integral Accounting: Well-Being – Part 7 of 7

…the capacity for any person or ecosystem to function at their optimal level where conditions are suitable for a person to be at liberty to fully engage in any activity or social enterprise entirely of their choosing as and when they so choose

Our current economic models abandoned humanity in the 18th century. While we take great consolation in the celebrated end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade we seem to conclude that slavery has been eradicated because it’s not a fixture in proximity to where we live. While we celebrate the more visible contribution of women in professional roles (now surpassing their male counterparts in absolute terms in many fields) we seem to conclude that gender discrimination is an anachronism. We don’t have our child labor sweatshops blighting our neighborhoods and pronounce public programs which will “leave no child behind.” Our multi-lateral organizations proclaim that we will “end poverty”, “empower women”, and defend the “rights of children”.

However, thinly veiled behind our proclamations is reality. When the military recruits most of its combat enlistees from economically disadvantaged communities promising a pathway to economic and educational benefits, are we really seeing free choice? When we see a world in which single mothers (a growing percentage of child care-givers) have to extend their work hours to make ends meet costing them personal and family engagements, are we really closer to a gender honoring society? When our children are fast-tracked into training and conditioning programs (marketed under the labels of head-starts) at the expense of spending time with grandparents, parents and friends, are they more likely to be equipped to choose lives of personal and community citizenship? In a world where philanthropy and multi-lateral non-governmental organizations rely on the largesse of those who gained their wealth through exploitative consumption, are we closer to ending poverty, oppression and injustice or are we placating what’s left of a conscience?

If you are reading this blog (first of all, congratulations for sticking with the series) I’ve got some challenging news for you. If you share an Integral Accounting world view and seek to live in a more rational human community, you will likely need to take stock of where you are in the system and get ready for some adjustments. If we really want everyone to have opportunities to engage in a world at their optimal level, we will need to find a path to suitability and modesty in a way that is foreign to many.

And herein lies the deepest challenge between US and transformed consciousness. And, mind you, we’re not alone in our predilection, in expediency, to conclude that it’s simply too much work thus reverting to the complacency that leaves our headaches for future generations. After all, when Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, Charles Malik, Peng Chun Chang set out in 1948 to get the world to agree that all humans “are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” they thought this concept would take off. Their vision, which launched what became the seven core human rights treaties (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, 1969); International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR, 1987); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (HRC, 1976); Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1982); Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, 1987); Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990); and, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW, 2004)). However, in its most recent report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is sanguine about the fact that many States are neither reporting nor addressing the conventions’ adherence. Backlog in complaints extend beyond two years in several instances. Precisely how long can one be hungry, homeless, enslaved, trafficked or oppressed before “backlog” becomes a euphemism for “we don’t care”?

You see, in a scarcity-based, mortality-incentivized, debt-ridden consumer industrial model the world accepts that we’re “doing what we can” with the resources optioned from national governments and philanthropic sources. However we’re missing the deepest point in Integral Accounting. Supporting Well-Being isn’t a nice-to-have luxury to be supported by discretionary largesse derived from profits. Well-Being is a TOP LINE INVESTMENT. Well-Being is about an ecosystem in which we operate – not the moralistic clean up operation after we’ve bankrupted our land, communities and fellow human beings. Double-bottom line – NONSENSE! By the time we get to the bottom line, we’ve already acquiesced and the line between charity and condescension is terribly blurry. We need to wake up to the fact that there is NO profit in a model which forced another human being or any other component of our shared ecosystem to suffer in silence so we could pretend that we profited.

At this point it’s relevant to point out that most of what passes for “conventional wisdom” in how business is done is propagated and manipulated by the spokespersons for less than 1% of all enterprises on earth – publicly listed companies. The vast majority of enterprises on Earth do a better job at approximating Integral Accounting because they realize that they’re only as good as the team that makes them tick. And even giant firms often have Integral Accounting in their earlier history. The great Dutch bank – Rabobank – began as a financing cooperative between farmers and bakers.

Which brings us to an interesting point. It is quite conceivable that our biggest stumbling block towards a more viable, suitable world is our insatiable delusion that “bigger” and “growth” are metrics of success. Ironically, every possible data point in nature tells us that this proposition is ludicrous yet somehow we maintain the insanity that “growth is good”. History shows us that bigger and well-being are not frequent companions. In fact, I suspect you’d be hard-pressed to find a single instance where the bigger an enterprise got, the more well-being was evidenced in its ecosystem. I’m reminded of a large company which is consistently rated as one of the best places to work in America but, interestingly has an employee divorce rate over twice the local average. It may be a great place to work but something about the ecosystem implies that it’s not quite as great a place to live and love!

What does TOP LINE Well-Being look like? For starters, it means that the entire ecosystem in which an endeavor is undertaken sits at a table (with full, equal, and informed transparency) and organizes the endeavor aligned with the principles set forth in this series. Rather than asking the question, “What percentage of the workforce will be hired locally?” it commits to insuring that all parties engage in whatever level of an interaction they wish to engage. And guess what. If you’re exploring for natural gas in Papua New Guinea, this means that you will train brilliant local talent to work alongside geologists and engineers so that they have equivalent participation. If you’re planning to extract rare earth metals out of coal fly ash, it means you engage the children of miners who died from black lung and have them involved with deploying technology with a conscience. If you’re expanding an investment banking analyst back-office programming shop in India, you make sure that your recruits spend as much time in New York and London as the MBAs from Wharton, Chicago, and Darden. If you’re looking to expand business into Mongolia, you start with an investment in re-engaging the nomadic yak herders who saw 20 million head of livestock die in the icy winter of 2009. If you’re building a publishing business to promote a service industry in the US, you make sure that your staff is part of your success from day one with great housing, access to schools, and all the benefits of life. TOP LINE Well-Being is an explicit recognition that every endeavor is made possible by factors well beyond the control or influence of a single person or entity. And if ANY part of the value chain is placed under stress and fails to benefit in a suitable fashion, the entire value chain is placed at risk.

I’m pretty sure that Well-Being will not be achieved by conventions, declarations, and rights. I’m pretty sure that Well-Being won’t be legislated or imposed. In fact, I suspect that we won’t get closer to Well-Being by launching the next campaign to end whatever is the scourge du jour. No, I am certain that Well-Being will be recognized when we see ourselves and our surroundings for what they are and then follow an impulse that aligns our momentary appreciation with the sentiment evoked by those surroundings.

I sat at a rooftop dinner in Manhattan this week with a 28 year old media professional. This young lady was deeply engaged in a conversation that swirled around the globe touching on issues ranging from the environment, to economics, to politics, to intrigue. When I raised the topic of the media’s silence on issues of injustice around the world, I saw something change. She said, “I wish that there was a way to tell people and make them care but, at the end of the day, it’s all about business – if you’re story doesn’t sell something, nobody cares.” Her face darkened as she said this and she found a recess in her being somewhere which longed for a different narrative. “Well, that will change,” I replied.

So, here’s the deal. Having conducted business for almost two decades by practicing an ever-deepening understanding of Integral Accounting I know that I’ve learned a lot. I also know I’ve got a lot left to learn. But I thought the perfect way to end this series is by offering you something in exchange for your taking time to be part of this effort. If any of you would like to have a detailed Integral Accounting audit or brainstorming session for your company, organization, or group, I’ll commit to doing a one day session in exchange for you evidencing at least two dimensions of integral value exchange with third parties. If you come to Charlottesville to be my guest, you’ll also find out that I’m a good cook – but that will be a different blog! Love and Light! Dave

Integral Accounting – Technology: Part 6 of 7

…artifacts or schemes by which value-added experiences and production can be effectuated including any thing, action, or utility which allows for the manifestation of spatially and temporally defined tangible or intangible artifacts or events

It’s been years since I entered a rather non-descript Russian Orthodox church outside of Moscow with my friend from the National Academy of Sciences Alexander Dyachenko. A small choir was rehearsing for mass inside and as we entered the church, the acoustics were such that our eyes were instantly drawn upward. The sound was coming from the eyes of the icons painted high on the wall above the altar. The harmony echoing from the high stone interior hung in the air and formed an acoustic connection with the saints. Connecting across centuries, an artist had chosen to place his sacred art in a place where everyone would see it during mass. Clearly he or his patron wanted to have the music connect to deeper spiritual significance.

In its modern use the term “technology” has become synonymous with a rather minimalist set of artifacts typically animated by either electricity or combustion. Ever since the dawn our addiction to the Westinghouse-Edison heroin pulsing through every artery of modern existence, we have become more enslaved to the delusion that if it doesn’t take power, it isn’t technology. However, it’s worth noting that in our mad rush for our next iTouch or hybrid car, a more inclusive understanding of technology is essential to free ourselves from our own suicidal race to mineral and energy oblivion.

Let’s review a bit of history. Advanced civilizations before us recognized that technology involved a sense of permanence. Crushed stone and beeswax formed colorfast images that are still luminous on Egypt’s iconic temples and tombs. Kodak and HP have nothing close. The Tiwanaku in Peru built their understanding of mathematics and cosmology into their buildings and towns in a manner which our most advanced minds cannot yet decipher. No GPS-aided architect can match their topographically adjusted construction which aligns with cosmic waypoints that current astronomers can’t begin to interpret. Stylus and chisel built monuments unrivaled by any modern architecture with ornate symbols conveying meanings long lost in our Google-based digital monotony. If we can’t find it on-line, we actually question if information even exists (certainly, if it’s not on-line, it can’t be trusted!).

In the United States, our driving impetus for technology development has been mortality. Like our addiction to immortalizing ourselves in our monetary system, our technology has, in the main, been the byproduct of military or medical expenditures. By total national expenditure, military (the funding of artifacts of death to coerce enemies into acquiescence to our world view) and medicine (the madness of trying to extend lives beyond the natural warranty of the human organism) are the largest two funding drivers of our technology addiction. It is no surprise that we are less creative and more impermanent in our technology today than our forebears. For in our current worldview, our focus is about survival – not renaissance and enlightenment.

I often challenge people in my lectures to identify any modern technology that has been INVENTED in the last 60 years. A bigger challenge is to add the caveat that the invention cannot have its roots in German innovation during the 1930’s and 40’s. Whether it’s the chemistry in medicine or the hypersonic propulsion of advanced aircraft, we’ve not engaged in much paradigm shifting awareness in our modern generation. To be clear, I try to help people understand the difference between:

Invention – the manifestation of a thing ex nihilo without analog in any other manifestation (something that our current system has not seen);
Innovation – the integration of existing components to address a specific context or proposed need; and
Incrementalism – the subtle adaptation of a thing for a particular consumer demand.

Since the bold, German-aided space race of the 1950’s and 1960’s we have seen virtually nothing but Incrementalism. IBM exists because of World War II cryptography challenges of the Japanese and Germans along with the entire computer industry. Procter & Gamble has filed patents on a detergent bubble for over 50 years so that we can launder our clothes under their patented watchful eye. Sildenafil citrate (marketed as Viagra) was developed in 1989 to treat vascular conditions, failed in its clinical trials but launched the world of erectile dysfunction obsession at the same time as diseases like malaria, cholera and countless other killers were on the rise. Ironically, the compound developed under the patenting, sex obsessed impulse of Pfizer actually has its roots to Swiss and German researchers from 1957! Welcome to modern innovation! Finding incremental market uses for 60 year old technology is fine. But don’t think for a moment that we’d know an Invention or Innovation if it bit us in the butt. Our technological hubris is built largely on our ignorance of what’s come before. Let’s face it, the RMS Titanic had more patents and innovations still in use today on board the night it sank than Apple has in its iPhone.

Adequate Integral Accounting for technology needs to be liberated from our automated, electro-combustive dependency. We believe that alternative energy doesn’t “work” because you can’t make it integrate with a grid last innovated in the 1960’s. We believe that alternative transportation is not practical because the inhabitants would be placed at risk with our two ton steel behemoths hurtling at them at insane speeds crushing a more suitable mode of transportation and its enlightened occupants.

In short, our aspiration and acceptance of technology could be more suitably aligned with:
- those things which provide the lowest barrier to use for the highest social gain;
- those things which provide the greatest utility for the least ecosystem cost;
- those things which facilitate greater collaboration and connection with the fewest discriminatory barriers; and,
- those things which, following their current utilization have the greatest optionality for repurposing and reuse.
Let’s imagine a new world and begin building it. And if we can’t build it ourselves, let’s begin rewarding those enterprises who use an integral value system in their production. Together, we can begin a journey into our ancient future of innovation for the betterment of humanity.

Integral Accounting: Money – Part 5 of 7

…modes of transmitting and recognizing value exchange using physical and virtual surrogates including currency, systems of credit and barter

In response to the twentieth century’s first United States’ balance of payments and trade deficit and in recognition of the international market’s loss of confidence in the U.S. economy and dollar, the Nixon Administration closed the gold window 29 years ago this past week. This anniversary slipped by with few noticing that the Federal Reserve, the control room for our free-floating dollar, was without even the crude tools Nixon used in August of 1971. In what amounts to the ultimate “dog ate my homework” excuses, the floating dollar anniversary was marked by Ben Bernanke and his henchpersons (yes, I’m politically correct) trying to serve cocktails to the passengers on the Titanic (a.k.a. spinning their nonsense on the Sunday morning talk shows). Our employment is diving into a yawning chasm too wide for our “safety nets”. Our debt is eclipsing our aspirational GDP. Our financial markets are firmly in the control of dueling quant models which are automatically trading in a macabre zombie dance of the dead.

Despite the near universal public acquiescence to the necessity of money, you’d be hard pressed to find a single person who understands it. M0, M1, M2, and M3 (though M3 was demoted on March 23, 2006 – like Pluto from the planetary fraternity – as not being relevant enough to measure) all form an intricate web of illusory value which the average person doesn’t take the time or effort to comprehend. Ironically, like the termination of the gold standard, the Fed’s decision to cease reporting M3 rendered the U.S. government’s counterparty risk invisible to all. So, the bottom line is we neither understand money and its flow nor do we even know how decoupled or leveraged it is from anything we might consider a metric of value. Yet the band plays on as “Nearer My God To Thee” mixes with the chorus of those slipping into the icy water.

There is a piece of art work hanging in an executive conference room in Salt Lake City which is shown in the image beside this post. The image is the outcome of the 1959 investigation by Congress into the interlocking directors of the U.S. financial system. It’s title – “Interlocking Directors of Discount Corp and It’s Owner Banks With Major Financial Institutions” – sounds rather mundane. However, the substance of the image is far from dull. For in it, you see confirmation of what I’ve written about for the duration of this blog – namely that our current incarnation of money is inextricably linked at its foundation to our mortality. For on this image, among many other fascinating tidbits, is the most interesting morsel of all – the identification of the board members of the Federal Reserve which were largely life insurance executives, not bankers.



The connection between our monetary system and mortality treads on a number of toes which don’t like to be trodden. In light of that, I want to simply state that, in a fractional reserve system such as the one we have in place today, an unspoken element of the calculus stabilizing the flow of money to support the economic illusion is the actuarial tables of death. The more consumers rely on debt – for things ranging from housing to cars to clothing to entertainment – the more the system is dependent on keeping your actuarial death well managed. As I have written before, the centrality of insurance companies to our economy totally justifies the government’s ludicrous intervention to save AIG and others. Had they not kept the insurance industry and its counter-parties afloat, it would have been the whole economy, not just the insurance and banking sector that would have evaporated. And, what they did do didn’t solve the problem. It merely delayed the date with the Ghost of Christmas Future.

You see, the primary motivation for purchasing life insurance is to insure that, on your death your debt is discharged. Sold as a benefit to the grieving family, what this really is is a utility to support fractional reserve monetary dynamics. Your insurance policy allows you to release money into the system from beyond the grave. As your last consumptive act, before the worms get you, you serve a great fractional reserve purpose of redistributing money into circulation. Thank you for dying! In the image below, you can see that the largest growth in life insurance sales and use coincides with, you guessed it, the Fed...


From: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/murphy.life.insurance.us

Fractional reserve based monetary systems consume you with debt, indenture you for your “productive life” and then deeply appreciate your demise – particularly if you don’t draw too much on your pensions, thank you very much. I’m reminded of Dickens’ line for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, that the poor should go ahead and die and “decrease the surplus population.”

So, let me be clear, I do not advocate using, being dependent on, or seeking to stabilize the current illusion of money. The system that we have is dead and its demise was wired into its birth. However, one need not throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because we don’t have a monetary system that works for all doesn’t mean that such a thing is impossible. It’s just impossible with the system currently in place.

Integrally Accounted money looks and acts differently and engenders different responses in its users. It has several key elements:

- It represents an obligation of counterparties to honor commitments
- It represents a recognition that time, materials, or services, in the moment, are inadequate to fully satisfy a value exchange so that future performance or satisfaction is required
- It represents a present subscription to participate in future fruitful production
- It represents a means of transferring value in a logistically efficient manner
- Like energy, it only has “value” in its exchange and flow
- When hoarded or restricted, it represents a measure of isolation and detachment
- It is a utility, not an artifact of success.

A simple way to think about how to become more inclusive about money is to consider the last time you thought that you’d do something “good” if you had the money to do it.

When we stand in the impulse of imagination, desire, or creation and look for a singular resource (money) and then animate the same with the ability to arbitrate the merits of the imaginative, desirable or creative impulse (“If it gets funded then we can….”), we are creating a subordination of our highest form of humanity (creativity) to an inanimate artifact of exchange. The most insidious part of this is that in a fractional reserve monetary system, this means that we’re really subordinating our creative impulse to those who control “legal tender”. It is therefore, no surprise, that when we are challenging the incumbency created by controllers, they delight in hearing that our dependency is on the one utility over which they have absolute control.

If, however, at the same moment of individual or collective imagination, desire or creation we look to the ecosystem in which the impulse was borne and celebrate the existence of the abundance in that moment, we have the capacity to align the impulse to its temporal and spatial genesis and with the outcomes commensurate with the deployment of present resources. If our impulse is, “Well, all I have is creativity,” then great – use that to its fullest potential. If it is “All I have is contacts,” then great – honor those and invite them into completing the first step. In short, by fully embracing the creative impulse to act and then acting in the abundance of the moment, the energy flow will begin which will take the effort in a manifestation path – at the manifestation scale – appropriate to the moment. Outcomes are measured simply by the following assessment – “Did I align all that over which I have stewardship to the impulse?” If yes and that’s the end – wonderful. No regrets. If the impulse needs other provisioning, great, those will manifest into the system in a form and time appropriate to the ecosystem. Taking account and stock of the present abundance and exercising stewardship over the same is an equipping test. If we honor the present abundance and steward it to its fullest extent, there can be no “failure” as one will have done all in their power to do.

There would be those who would advocate that we simply exclude money because the system associated with its current incarnation is too corrupt to redeem the word. To that argument I would simply encourage a more awakened perspective. Money isn’t the problem – our complicity with an illusory fractional reserve monetary system and the abuse it has wrought on our ecosystem and fellow humanity is. Practice developing alternatives – currency, vouchers, IOUs, and other utilities of exchange and see how easy a world with Integrally Accounted money can emerge. And ironically, you don’t need a monopolist-in-chief turned Ponzi-schemer-in-chief to make it work. None of us do. Including him.