Can our communities serve as onshore safe havens for our retirement capital? There is no one more intent on figuring this out than the people who will be gathering at Financial Permaculture: The Greening of a Rural American Community on October 24-28th in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
We will be going into the “invention room” for five days to develop business plans for a number of different businesses, including a green incubator and ethanol. I have asked some of the best and brightest members in the Solari network to come and participate as both students and resident experts to help support the green business development teams as they develop their plans to finance their businesses. We will also be working on cross-cutting finance issues that address how we build the financial bridges for a portion of our investment capital to move from global financial markets to local investment.
Here are seven more reasons you want to join us on the ground or through the blogosphere!
Carolyn A. Betts
Carolyn Betts is an attorney from Cincinnati, Ohio whose practice has focused on legal aspects of corporate finance, real estate, securities and small business and business ventures. While practicing in Washington, DC, she advised various government agencies, both as an investment banker and an attorney, in connection with housing programs and policy and the disposition of their non-performing commercial, single family and multifamily mortgage loans.
During the savings & loan crisis, Carolyn represented Resolution Trust Corporation, the government entity created to act as receiver for defunct savings & loans. Over the years, she has served as issuer’s counsel for both small private offerings and large initial public offerings of real estate related and other securities.
Currently, Carolyn serves as general counsel for Solari, Inc. and Solari Investment Advisory Services LLC. While at Solari, she has helped Catherine design the LLC and partnership structures for Solari Circles for both liquid and non-liquid local investment, been responsible for investment advisory law compliance, and been responsible for legal and tax issues for the offering of A/B share stock in an alternative media company based in New Zealand, intellectual property and other issues related to the operation of an online store and various small business, tax and corporate issues.
Carolyn has an undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College, a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Cincinnati and a law degree from Northern Kentucky University.
Court Skinner
Court is the founder of Computers for Everyone. He is a retired semiconductor professional (Head of Research at National Semiconductor) trying to make a difference in his local community of East Palo Alto, California by refurbishing computers and giving them to kids and grandparents. He is chair of his local planning commission and is currently running for election to his local school board. He has a Phd from MIT. So does his wife Barrie who will be joining him at Financial Permaculture.
Phil Cubeta
At Gift Hub, Phil Cubeta has created one of the most interesting and dynamic blogs around that brings together a who’s who of philanthropy. Phil currently serves as Chief of Staff for a national financial services organization located in Dallas. In January of 2009, Phil will join The American College in Bryn Mawr, PA as the Wallace Chair of Philanthropy. Phil is will be participating as a private citizen. The views he presents may not represent those of his employer — but they will be insightful and interesting!
Jason Eaton
Financial Advisor - Jason began his career as an ecologist. After years of work as an activist on social and environmental issues, combined with a few classes on economics, he decided the best way to bring about sustainability was to influence the way money works. Jason’s undergraduate studies were in Natural Resource Ecology and holds a graduate certificate in Environmental Education, both from the University of Idaho . Jason is a Registered Representative and focuses on socially responsible investing, including community investing, micro cap stocks of sustainable businesses, global political economy, and innovative investment strategies for social change. He is joining us from Syracuse, New York.
Franklin Sanders
The Moneychanger - Franklin Sanders grew up in Memphis, spent two years in the US Army, and attended graduate school at Tulane and the Free University of Berlin. In 1980 Mr. Sanders opened a gold and silver brokerage, and began publishing his newsletter, The Moneychanger. He has written or co-authored six books. In 1993 Mr. Sanders wrote (for Jim Blanchard) Silver Bonanza: How to Profit From the Coming Bull Market in Silver. In 2001 he wrote the Next Great Depression Survival Manual and in 2004 Why Silver Will Outperform Gold by 400%, available from www.the-moneychanger.com. Franklin has published two audio seminars with Solari, Investing in Silver and Gold Coins and Building Real Wealth.
Mr. Sanders lives and also farms with his wife and six of their seven children and ten grandchildren in Dogwood Mudhole, Tennessee, which is not near anywhere else. It is, however, about an hour from Hohenwald and two hours from Catherine in Hickory Valley, Tennessee.
Franklin will be joining the Finance team at Financial Permaculture for Saturday, October 25th only.
Susan Johann
Photographer - Susan’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. She has been seen in a solo show at Condeso/Lawler Gallery in New York and at John Stevenson Gallery in New York’s latest art center - Chelsea. Her photographs are included in private and corporate collections including the Marriott, Bolton-St.John’s and Shaver & Melahn. Susan is a member of Catherine’s Solari Circle, the First Ever Solari Circle and serves on the planning commission in Tryon, North Carolina where she and her husband Dallas moved several years ago from Manhattan.
Anais Starr
Anais Starr is Operations Manager for Solari, Inc. She is very busy working full time with Catherine Austin Fitts! Anais has 30 years’ experience as a paralegal specializing in courtroom presentation and technical graphics. And the same amount of experience in the natural foods industry, having been owner/operator of several successful organic natural foods grocery stores. She lives in Kalispell, Montana.
Dear Catherine & Solari Inc.,
This event looks awesome and easily the most important
and relevant event this year. The faculty looks like a
“Dream Team” to help educate and support us in creating
a new world by shifting to a sustainable financial paradigm.
Having said that, I am unable to attend the conference
due to financial constraints. What about those people,
like me, who cannot attend the live event, but would
still love to be a part of the event?
Are you, or your staff, planning on video recording
this event to later be released as a DVD set similar
to your GATA.ORG DVD series? Because if so, I would
*buy* that as soon as it became available. Im sure
that Im not the only one.
Please, with all due respect, consider my request to
record this event as Im certain that this would not only
generate revenue for Solari, but it would allow people
from all over the world to learn, grow and evolve from
this special once in a lifetime event.
Respectfully,
J.P.
Catherine made a comment in a recent interview with Jeff Rense that struck me as key.
“If you want to live in a healthy world, you’re going to need a media and education that allows people to see things whole.”
John Gatto, 1991 New York teacher of the year and voice for educational reform, has done a stellar job of describing how the Prussian model set the standard for educational systems right up to the present; “The whole system was built on the premise that isolation from first-hand information and fragmentation of the abstract information presented by teachers would result in obedient and subordinate graduates, properly respectful of arbitrary orders,” he writes. He says the American educationists imported three major ideas from Prussia. The first was that the purpose of state schooling was not intellectual training but the conditioning of children “to obedience, subordination, and collective life.” Thus, memorization outranked thinking. Second, whole ideas were broken into fragmented “subjects” and school days were divided into fixed periods “so that self-motivation to learn would be muted by ceaseless interruptions.” Third, the state was posited as the true parent of children. All of this was done in the name of a scientific approach to education, although, Gatto says, “no body of theory exists to accurately define the way children learn, or what learning is of most worth.
The inability to see things whole manifests itself in my community as people taking the attitude that “there’s nothing I can do about it anyway” when presented with information that doesn’t fit into the bubble of reality they have secured for themselves. They simply don’t have anywhere to put the information, so it’s discarded.
During the last election cycle, a candidate came to town campaigning for the office of Attorney General for the state of Nevada. There was an initiative on the ballot to legalize marijuana, so the papers were carrying stories on meth abuse, etc. The candidate mentioned the drug issue in their ‘meeting with the community speech’ and asked for questions afterward. I brought up a few points I thought were vital to the issue of the ‘drug problem’ and she responded “Well, there nothing I can do about that; I can only do what I can do on a local level.” This is from a woman who went on to win the position as one of the 50 ‘top cops’ in the U.S.
Of course, what we can do about it is educate ourselves to see things whole so that the decisions we make on a local level have the benefit of perspective. It’s somewhat of a challenge to hear and read solutions on a local level that seem disconnected from the reality of the bigger picture and how things are interconnected.
As an aside – When used with discretion, the internet has proven itself to be an amazing vehicle for learning to see things whole. If it were not for the internet, I think I’d be as adrift on a sea of disinformation as everyone else and feel we must make every effort to protect it.
Very interested in seeing the process and outcomes here. I cannot attend, but I will definitely track the meeting through this blog and others. Thanks.
I totally inderstand and Im ahead of their game,But…
I think I’d like to work and live in a community of people who will create their own destiny.
Do you put people in touch with each other?
A group of permaculture orientated people would make good neighbors.
My qulifications are :retired engineer,Green through & through,etc.solar….
At your siminars,will you list new communities being developed?
I AM coming this week! And am so very thankful that you posted so much on the web for me to read ahead of time. I am presently taking the Permaculture course of Andrew Leslie Phillips at the Hancock Permaculture Center in NY. Will you be going over the Trusts that Bill Mollison speaks of in his Chapter 14? There are many people in the US and in many countries worldwide that are loosely tied in the Sacred Fire Community. One in Colorado and in 2 in areas of New England are in the early beginnings of intentional communities. We wish to go green. We also have a Sacred Fire Foundation - SFF. Could you speak to us of how that might best work? We looked into Rockafeller’s Flow Funding and feel that is not appropriate for us. Could we have multiple Trusts of intentional communities - at least 2 trusts each like on page 518 - and then have the SFF receive surplus and send it worldwide to where it may be needed to be invested? Thank you for having the course and considering these questions.
Dear Catherine and Dreamteam, I wanted to let you know that a small group of us in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada formed a similar interest-free banking/financial permaculture “dream team” back in February 2008. Our goal, much like yours, is to explore new options for banking, without interest (usury) working with a modification of the JAK Members Bank in Sweden (the only non-Islamic interest-free bank), investing in local businesses through local investment funds (based on the Upstream 21 model: a locally-focused investment fund founded by my friend Leslie Christian (CFA) in Seattle), person-to-person lending (a local KIVA.org), creating local currency, and purchasing locally (including attempts to live a 100-mile diet).
At this stage we have identified the option of interest-free loans for helping households in Edmonton (a city of 1 million people) get off the energy grid (e.g. solar panels, geothermal, etc.). We are proposing that a large segment of our Social Enterprise Fund (a subset of the Edmonton Community Foundation funds) be used to extend loans to households who wish to get off the grid in Edmonton to secure an interest-free loan (up to $30,000). The cost of administering each loan would be paid through the energy savings realized by each household (retained by the loan fund until the loan is repaid) thus covering the full cost of administration yet avoiding any interest cost to the borrower. Once the loan principle is repaid those energy savings are then the benefit of the homeowner. This is our first innovation where a new interest-free loan is now available tied to real needs.
We are also exploring the creation of interest-free banks within Church communities, both in the Muslim community and many Christian churches (I am teaching about usury and the original treatment of usury by the Catholic Church, now forgotten since 1850).
We want you all to know that you have brothers and sisters here in Canada who are exploring wonderful options and are looking forward to hearing about the outcome of your forthcoming financial permaculture gathering in Hohenwald.
I would love to connect with you Catherine, by phone. I am an ecological economist and author of The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth. I would love to send you a copy. In my book I deal with banking, money, the Federal Reserve and other subjects on usury proposing alternatives much like you are doing (on George Noory’s show which I’m listening to, Oct 16 spot). I am good friends with people you probably know including David Korten (on Bainbridge Island), Gifford Pinchot III (and Libba), and Pat Carmack (The Money Masters creator).
Many blessings on your important work
Mark Anielski
Author and Economist
The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
anielski@gmail.com
http://www.genuinewealth.net
Thank you for your website
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take care and thank you again!
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Was that last comment supposed to make sense?
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