June 5, Friday

In the Greater Universe All Life is for Contribution,acrylic
by Jim Rose-Foreman, 2007

Yesterday for the first time in 20 years or so I sat down and really looked at our personal finances. This is on the list of things I want to do just below having a complete root canal. My budget plan has always been to live far enough below my income that I never have to keep track of what goes in or out. But now that both of us are retired that's getting harder to do. It's time to figure it all out. And of course I now have more time than money which is convenient.

At the same time that I'm looking at our family budget, I've decided to take a look at the world economic crisis. Now this is even farther down on my list, somewhere below being in the same room with Dick Chaney. But my dear friend Carolyn Bninski, a dedicated activist for peace and justice, has this way of making it seem almost appealing to look at the hard things in life like nuclear weapons, war, racism and corporate greed. I am starting off my quest of understanding the economic crisis with a book Carolyn recommended by David Korten entitled Agenda for a New Economy: from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. The book cover proclaims: "Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace it."

Reading a book on economics is not as bad as you might think. In fact there is not one graph in the whole book which makes me feel better right away. Korten has a knack for explaining the problem and also communicating the vision of a better way using language that is understandable as well as deep, wide and inclusive reflecting thorough knowledge and understanding of the issue.

To summarize, Korten lays much of the blame for our current global economic crisis on Wall Street which has created what he calls "phantom wealth" or wealth created without production of anything of real value. He states:

It is easy to confuse money with the real wealth for which it can be exchanged - our labor, ideas, land, gold, health care, food and all other things with value in their own right. The illusions of phantom wealth are so convincing that most Wall Street Players believe the wealth they are creating is real."

Phantom wealth is everywhere in our economy creating the fortunes of the extremely wealthy while simultaneously deflating the value of real labor and goods. I am not the first to liken this scenario to the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. We are currently at the point where the curtain is falling down and the Wizards of Wall Street are pumping away trying desperately to keep their illusive world from collapse. It's over. They just don't know it yet. The sooner we understand this and start work to create a new, intentional, ethical, community based system, the better.

Korten outlines a 12 step process to begin this economic transformation. Step one is the umbrella for the other steps: "Redirect the focus of economic policy from growing phantom wealth to growing real wealth." To accomplish this he recommends a process he calls "liberating Main Street". Main Street is defined as small local businesses and even small corporations with strong ties to a local community. The goal is for local communities to achieve economic self-reliance by supplying local people with their needs and, through a system of fair trade, exchange surpluses with other communities. This is a human scale economics that even I can understand.

Barak Obama came to the US Presidency with a mandate for change. Certainly many things are different than in the past administration. Yet many things including the unquestioning faith in Wall Street and phantom wealth have not changed. Green technology, promoted by Obama, while needed, is after all just another technological fix. It is not fundamental change of the system. Anyone who looks deeply at the state of Planet Earth and human culture right now can see that a techno fix, a tweak, will not work. Korten in a statement on his web site says unequivocally: "We face a race against time between the awakening of the Earth Community consciousness and the spread of social and environmental collapse. Our window of opportunity could slam shut at any time with chilling finality." The last chapter of his book is entitled, "When the People Lead the Leaders Will follow". So there it is again, "we are the ones we have been waiting for" as the Hopi Elder's Prophecy tells us. We know this is true. It puts the economic crisis in context. "The Great Turning", this required change in human consciousness, involves a fundamental change in the trajectory of human cultural evolution - away from the trajectory of Empire to that of Community. Use your imagination if you will, to conjure up what that might mean in your own life.

That takes me back to my own family budget. My retirement fund, like those of many Americans, is in a mutual fund which invests in Wall Street. The fund like all others has taken a dive this year. I could wait to see if it goes back up and play the game with the Wizard for a while longer. Or I could take it out of that dying system altogether and invest in my community through municipal bonds or even a community bank. After all, that investment small as it is, represents a lot of hard work by both myself and my mom. We both earned our money serving people. What a crazy paradox to have that same money now serve the dark side of human endeavor. There is no Wizard behind the curtain, just a bunch of skinny guys in black suits sipping Starbucks for a little while longer. Its time to leave the Wizard to his ultimate demise, claim the lion's courage and make a change.