Our mission is to stimulate the interaction and action of leaders, scholars, and society by raising awareness of the need to harness the power of capital and markets to advance a just, resilient, and sustainable economic system that will improve lives and preserve the planet.
On August 21, the Global Footprint Network announced, humanity “exhausted” its ecological budget for 2010. In other words, we will have expended more of the earth’s ecological services than it can replenish. Humanity crossed over into ecological overshoot about 30 years ago, according to the Network, and we now use up one year and five month’s worth of ecological services in a year’s time. Find out more at the Global Footprint Network.
We are delighted to welcome Penelope Douglas to our Advisory Board. Penelope brings years of on the ground experience building and financing small businesses, most recently through her leadership of Pacific Community Ventures, which she co-founded. Penelope is a nationally recognized thought leader in community development investment, and recently advised the Obama Administration in the crafting of its small business job-creation initiatives. Learn more
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Many members of the Capital Institute community believe that the emerging markets for ecosystem services hold considerable promise as tools for redirecting the flow of capital toward economic activities that honor ecosystem constraints. However, a paper that recently circulated among us entitled "The Environmentality of 'Earth Incorporated'" raised some questions that challenge that belief...Read more
National Community Investment Fund, a certified Community Development Financial Institution, was established in 1996 as a nonprofit entity “to invest capital in and enable knowledge transfer to Community Development Banking Institutions around the country.” Chief Fund Advisor Saurabh Narain, an ex-derivatives banker, talks about NCIF's Social Performance MetricsSM, which allow potential “double-bottom-line” investors and other stakeholders to identify banks and thrifts that are truly dedicated to underserved communities...Read more
The CDFI Assessment and Rating System (CARS™) was launched in 2004, after a number of years of research and development, to enable the CDFI loan fund sector to scale up investment and thus to deepen and broaden its impacts. A project of the Opportunity Finance Network, CARS™ has already created a greater degree of standardization and transparency in the CDFI loan fund industry...Read more
As part of our "Reducing the Wealth Gap" series, Capital Institute spoke with Clifford Rosenthal, a pioneer of U.S. community development finance, about the future of an industry that works quietly and effectively to reduce income inequality by bringing financial services to markets from which the big banks have retreated... Read more
An intellectual boutique for redesigning cultural DNA… a global acupuncturist applying fine policy needles at optimal intervention points with the goal of reconfiguring dysfunctional systems. Those are apt descriptions of Hazel Henderson, a brilliant, self-taught, systems thinker, “anti-economist,” and determined outsider who has been knocking hard for years with a remarkable degree of success on the doors of the establishment to deliver her iconoclastic "beyond macroeconomic" message. The sustainability movement is only now beginning to catch up with this visionary thinker...Read more
Leslie Christian of Upstream 21
The chair of the board of this innovative holding company talks about Upstream 21's alternative transition strategies for small companies, as well as the challenges of channeling growth and profits in directions that have the most benefits for the most people and the environment. Read more
The more I discover about the modern financial system, the less I recognize it, and the more incredulous I grow. And I worked at the center of the financial system until 2001.
My comment is prompted by the latest news that several leading hedge fund managers and private equity moguls are lashing out at the Obama Administration and funneling money, lots of it, to the GOP....
An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from antisocial conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of cooperation.
The ecologist calls these symbioses....
Stress-test complacency will be a cause of the next financial meltdown.
Economic commentators have been increasingly using the word "uncertainty" of late. The context has included the business climate, the stimulate vs austerity debate, and forecasting the investment outlook across capital markets. Two examples:
"When businesses...
We are pleased to announce the first initiative of the Capital Lab: "The Third Millennium Economy." The Third Millennium Economy intends to construct a roadmap of where we are and where we need to get to in order to transition to a truly sustainable economic system. Unlike many conversations about "the future of capitalism", this initiative is grounded in the scientific understanding of the world's leading ecologists about the planetary boundaries that a sustainable economy needs to respect. Capital Institute President John Fullerton Co-chairs this initiative. We are honored to be a contributor to and sponsor of this important work, and are seeking additional sponsorship at this time. Read more
