How a Would-be French Teacher Became an Economic Wonk

Gwendolyn Hallsmith didn't set out to became an expert on sustainable development and monetary policy. Like many women I discovered in my research on economic women for Screwnomics, Gwen got here by simply pursuing what she held dear. She began by protesting threats to the environment, but says that eventually she saw protest alone wasn't enough. You needed a plan of action, a solution, or at least a goal with a community process for reaching it.

The result is a half-dozen books on community and city planning, sustainable development, currency, and local economies. She travels the world to speak to diverse people, who are looking for economic answers.  Most recently, she says in this interview with Crystal Arnold, on Money- Wise Women, a podcast radio show, Gwen spoke to a group in Costa Rica. She discovered there, people with similar goals of sustainability and community to those she fosters in her home state of Vermont. Importantly she fosters methods and action, as well.

What are a sustainable economy's parts? An economy and monetary policy that supports workers, a healthy environment and food system, and local investment in community and local small businesses is a goal. But we face barriers. She talks here about the female hands that help "hold up the sky," whose caring and work is routinely left out of the way we account for the economy.  About sexism in our value system, she says:  "It's not only concentrated in money, it's magnified." The Federal Reserve is part of the topic here, creating and enforcing an artificial scarcity. 

She's doing "An Economy for All of Us" education series on YouTube, and talks about it here. Her analysis uses a 5-part acronym she calls OMMMM, to name the economy's components in order of importance: Ownership, Money, Markets, Management, and Metrics. Her dissection is clear and accessible, and Crystal's comments and questions are more intimate that the typical talk. Listen to this woman-to-woman conversation here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/money-wisewomen/2018/04/18/gwendolyn-hallsmith

Women's Experiences vs. "Year of the Woman." Again.

Tiffany Bluemle heads a new alliance of women's organizations in Vermont that has gathered formidable data in the economic arena not usually visible. Change the Story is engaged in persuasive dialogue with businesses and state government. it's an example of what's possible when women put their heads together, especially when, like Tiffany,  their heads are as wise as their hearts. 

Cupcake Banking in the Public Interest

I just had a great conversation with Wade Rathke at WABF in New Orleans, who asked me about the “cupcake” economy I talk about in Screwnomics, and ways to make lasting change. Everyone should get some frosting, borne up by a cake mix of commerce, home, and community—not separate layers, but working together.

Drawing on Hazel Henderson, Ellen Brown, and Gwendolyn Hallsmith, I talked about ethical investing, local investing and the local economy, including local currencies—and also about public banking. Right away Wade knew the history of North Dakota and its Nonpartisan League, which worked to promote women’s right to vote, and against east coast bank and corporate exploitation. http://history.nd.gov/ndhistory/npl.html

Wade has long been a champion of us people who get the short end of the stick in this economy. But why does disempowering women and screwing the majority so often go hand in hand? That’s what Screwnomics decodes and makes clear. Wade and I agreed that we need an Economic #MeToo movement!

The amazing thing for me is that many of the ND state leaders who brought about progressive change in the early 1900s were Republicans, who in those days, I’ll remind you, were also pro-birth control and helped fund Planned Parenthood. Things have changed, except for this: the impetus to disempower women goes hand-in-hand with screwing the majority.

One of the longest-lasting measures of the Nonpartisan League was establishment of the Bank of North Dakota, capitalized by state revenue, its tax money—with a mission to promote the state’s economy, instead of the richest stockholders of the biggest eastern banks. They didn’t send all their revenue to Wall Street to be gambled. BND even did well in 2008 when big private banks had to be bailed out at taxpayer cost.

Now there’s a movement to replicate BND’s fiscal success for the people (low, low student loan rates, more readily available loans for small business and farmers) in other states. Even cities want to bank in the local public interest. Why put all our eggs in one Wall Street basket?? Isn’t it wiser to diversify?  http://www.insidesources.com/is-the-bank-of-north-dakota-a-solution-to-municipal-financing-after-divestment/

Curious? You can find Ellen Brown’s interview with me on Public Banking Institute’s “It’s Our Money” here: http://itsourmoney.podbean.com/. Wade’s World on WBKF can be found on the link below, and my interview will be posted there in the company of so many remarkable women and men, who know we need change: http://www.kabf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Wades%20World%20%20050418.

Riane Eisler and Nancy Folbre, Two Long-Haulers for Change

Riane Eisler's ground-breaking big-picture history, The Chalice and The Blade (1987), has influenced a whole generation of women. Fewer women have read her book, The Real Wealth of Nations (2007), the title a play on words that Adam Smith made famous in his 1776 economic tome, The Wealth of Nations. I used her economic book as part of seminar I taught at Vermont College, and just last summer was invited to present  with her at a Vermont "Womanomics" conference--and then she endorsed my book, Screwnomics!

I come from a long line of women accountants—and in my book I talk about the need to adjust our national accounting system.  Right now the GDP measures only one item: dollars. It is only an "income" statement, adding up every dollar exchanging hands. By GDP's reckoning, natural disasters are a windfall, costing Americans in insurance payouts, reconstruction, legal settlements and fines, and environmental cleanup, driving up the GDP! 

Is that a good thing? No, we need a balance sheet, that shows us more accurately our real costs and real benefits. In Screwnomics I mention GPI (Genuine Progress Indicators) now adopted by two states, Maryland and Vermont, though only Maryland updates figures annually. http://dnr.maryland.gov/mdgpi/Pages/default.aspx

I also talk about the GNH, or Gross National Happiness measurements, more serious than they sound, first adopted by Bhutan, and promoted here in the US by a movement begun by my Vermont friends Ginny Sassaman and Paula Francis. http://gnhusa.org/

We also should consider Riane Eisler's important new measurements, created in collaboration with Eisler's Center for Partnership Studies, and economist Nancy Folbre, who has long written about the unpaid work at the heart of any economy. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/nancy-folbres-feminist-unorthodox-economics. Their Social Wealth Economic Indicators (SWEI, pronounced "sway") actually seek to show how respecting and strengthening our rich, social connections at home and in our communities actually RESULTS in better economic-dollar outcomes. Then even our rather stupid GDP would be able to see it. http://caringeconomy.org/newindicators/

Eisler and Folbre actually presented together in 2013 at a conference sponsored by Champlain College and UVM's Gund Institute. You can watch it here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZNuSdGLBMA

Such measurements of what now remains invisible—our persistent love and attention to what really matters—should be part of women's Economic#MeToo movement! Let's SWEI with national happiness! —Rickey Gard Diamond

Sneak Peak: Chapter 9

S N E A K P E A K: Chapter 9: Proof of the Global Pudding

"Growing up, I was taught that manners are moral, and that if you couldn’t say anything nice about someone, it was better not to say anything at all. Already I’ve badmouthed the great neoliberal economist, Milton Friedman, as well as the schools of Keynesian, classical, Marxist and mostly male economists.

            I have served up a rude cabbage-radicchio soup metaphor to explain EconoMan’s overpriced and overconfident, gassy, lying bubbles of 2008. I’ve protested his toxic global farts, waved away and always blamed on someone else. I’ve insulted both major US political parties, calling them players and jackasses.

            I want you to know this goes against my grain and my feminine upbringing. It probably does yours, too. We’ve been taught to be nicer. So I will here resort to a kinder metaphor, another of my mother’s favorite homilies and foods. Whenever she said a sharp, cutting thing, which happened rarely and only with over-ample evidence, her chin would rise, her mouth would tighten, no-nonsense, because there it was, right in front of you: The proof is in the pudding, she’d say.

            By now, we’ve had about 40 years of neoliberal free markets in a global economy. I’ve been saying that neoliberal ideas sold by the Washington Consensus have been cruel and damaging—but an economist might answer—So? The real question is have neoliberal free market policies delivered the economic rich dish we were promised?"

The Eros of Money

I've been doing a lot of great radio interviews and podcasts, but not often with that rare bird, a female economist. Crystal Arnold and I had a conversation that went a little deeper than many of my short interviews allow--into the heart of my book. We talked about what I call EroNomics, the stuff you cannot buy or sell, but can only give away and share.  Eros is the renewable fuel of any economy. It motivates, and gives us purpose. It calls on us to open to our dreams and be better than we ever knew we could be. 

Poet Audre Lorde influenced my thinking about the practicality (and even necessity) for claiming your deepest desires. She wrote an important essay "The Uses of the Erotic." Another influence was psychologist Rollo May, who wrote Love and Will. May warned Americans of a predictable demise when we deny Eros, or what psychologists call the sum total of all our instincts for self-preservation and survival. We need those instincts more than ever today.... I was delighted to discover Arnold's show, Money-Wise Woman....Here's the link!