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SOLARI:
Illuminating The Local Economy My
lifelong passion has been about recreating a deeper sense of community,
the relationships on many levels that contain the true richness of life.
It meant protecting the Earth, caring for one another in a way that
guarantees the dignity of all of humanity, and cultivating the inner
relationship to a higher power that defines absolute freedom. Money
had played a very small role in this journey, but came front and center
a little over a year ago when I heard a talk given by astrologer Caroline
Casey and Catherine Austin Fitts. The title of the presentation was
Magic and Money. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but had been
deeply inspired by a talk given by Caroline at the previous year’s
Bioneers conference. Catherine is an internationally recognized investment
banker, and was the former Assistant Secretary to HUD under Bush I.
She refers to herself as a recovering Republican. It was an interesting
juxtaposition in worldviews as she and Caroline, an elfin, pagan interpreter
of symbols and mythos, stood on stage together, and yet the combination
was dynamic and perfect. Caroline
drew in those who didn’t want anything to do with the system and
Catherine gave credibility to what might be perceived as ungrounded.
Catherine spoke on how our money is being used in the larger system.
She said that if the thousands of people who had gone out on the streets
in protest over an impending war against Iraq had pulled their money
out of Citibank, or similar institutions the same day, the government
would have listened. I knew that she was right. As it was we, the concerned
and active citizenry of this “democracy” were being completely
discounted and there was a deep sense of despair over the current state
of affairs. She went on to say that when the government looks at antiwar
protesters they discount the protester’s words in deference to
their actions, and what most people are voting for with their money
is in line with the government’s policies, or business as usual.
I am adamant that I don’t adhere to the same value system as those
in power. However, my lack of understanding about how money works beyond
the basics I need to operate my own life, has by default conceded my
power to others who are all too happy to run the show. In
the book, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the
Country, William Greider theorizes about what brought about a collective
dumbing down of the U.S. citizenry around how money works and who controls
it. “The confusing economic language employed by the Fed made it
easier for citizens to block out the money question–to accept instead
the powerful mystery. This was odd but nonetheless true: in a great
democracy, where political power depended upon information and every
interest clamored for it, the American culture had repressed the knowledge
of money. There is no other way to describe the mass ignorance or explain
it except as a collective blocking out. . .. The general ignorance created
its own political imbalance, enhancing the influence of the small minority
who did understand the subject and cared most intensely.” Greider
also suggests this denial around money accompanied the move of self-reliant
farmers to the cities during the industrial revolution. There was a
kind of faustian bargain that was struck in the relinquishing of their
connection to the land, and with it the access to a larger context of
life, for material gains and a perceived security through a regular
paycheck. This wound to the spirit then created a silent agreement that
the source of the money, or how the system operated, would not be talked
about so long as one could continue to soothe a sense of the loss of
deeper meaning with material comforts. Although
Catherine spoke of the bad news about where we are at in her presentation
that night, she also came with a solution and she called it, Solari,
meaning to reduce anxiety through illumination. Solari is an economic
model for revitalizing communities by brining our money home and investing
it locally. Catherine’s creation of this model came after being
let go from HUD when she proposed a system of transparency for tracking
the flow of money. After leaving HUD, Catherine’s firm, Hamilton
Securities Group, Inc., developed a piece of software called Community
Wizard to assist communities in tracking money locally, as a way of
putting power back into the hands of the average citizen. That software,
and all of the firm’s computer equipment, were seized by the government
and destroyed, along with other actions against her firm. The following
year $59 billion dollars worth of unaccounted for expenditures were
reported by HUD, with no effort by the government to determine where
the money was or to get it back. Keeping
the Money Local The
second unique feature of Solari is to set up an investment advisor to
raise and circulate equity capital invested in local businesses. Solari
uses a two class structure—Solari A voting shares and Solari B
nonvoting shares. A shares can only be purchased by members of the community
and are the only shares with voting rights. B shares can be traded on
an open exchange, the value of which increases as the “Solari index”
goes up. The “Solari index,” a term coined by Catherine, is
a different measure of success than the Consumer Price Index. Basically,
it measures the confidence people have in sending their child to the
corner store alone to buy a popsicle and having them return home safely.
The value system that drives the “Solari index” is also about
whether the environment, schools, and local businesses are thriving.
In other words, the healthier the community and the environment, the
better the return on investment in the community’s Solari stock.
When we talk about socially responsible investing, this is as good as it gets. Many of the corporations that are now categorized as “socially responsible” investments aren’t necessarily exemplary in their social ethics. Without transparency we have no way of getting full disclosure on a corporation’s practices. When our investments speak of our faith in each other, and when the businesses we are invested in are in our own neighborhoods, we have the opportunity to lovingly realigned a polluting business, for example, with the agreed upon values. Otherwise, those businesses know they risk not being eligible for the community investment pool and stand to lose customers as well. |
