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! 

SNEAK PEAK Chapter 12!

A Sneak Peak from Screwnomics*, Chapter 12...

           "The real world economy is very different than that described in standard economic theory, writes economist Sabine O’Hara in her article “Everything Needs Care: An Economy in Context” from a book I’ll revisit in the next chapter. She explains,  there is only so much arable land to grow human food and so much water to be polluted or used up. By concentrating only on output and ignoring the biological sources for that output—human and ecological inputs—we are using up non-renewable resources and harming nature’s ability to renew life. That is the ultimate inefficiency.

            O’Hara writes, “As restorative and reproductive capacities are impaired, efficiency levels cannot be sustained without ever increasing investments. The results are self-evident. Half of the world’s wetlands, temperate and tropical forests are gone; more than half of all arable land is suffering some degree of deterioration and desertification; oceans are dying and 75 percent of marine fisheries are either over-fished or fished to capacity.”

            Without care and attention, earthly communities that support our human ones will come unraveled, and so will we.  A rise in human poverty in exhausted environments where people formerly sustained their lives is another marker of our threatened future.

            EconoMan finds competition unerringly good. By contrast, biologists find competition a state that brings harm to species. If two species compete for water or a particular food, natural selection requires that one species ultimately dies out—or else adapts. Equilibrium within an ecology results when species efficiently interrelate and reproduce only enough offspring to sustain numbers.

            I learned more about adaption when I went to Cape Cod for a field trip seminar on the horseshoe crab..."

What readers are saying on Goodreads...

We're getting new reviews on Goodreads every day...check them out!

“Screwnomics is just what the Econo-Doctor ordered! With candor, humor, and a bit of smut that befits the boorish, loutish nature of the current and historical economic system, Gard Diamond provides an eye-opening education for American women of all ages on what goes on ‘behind that curtain.’" 

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“No one but Rickey Gard Diamond can take a dry subject like Economics and bring it to life, make it sexy, and over the top readable! I dare to say this book is for women! All women, all ages.”

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“This book is a real eye-opener even for those of us who thought we knew something about the financial system in this country. Rickey Gard Diamond explains how we women get screwed by the system and also shows us that when women are in charge of economic policy, they work for the well being of all rather than the 1%.”

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“Part college textbook, part “a peek behind the curtain”, and part casual conversation; Screwnomics is a must read for anyone who’s every thought “the economy” was a vague term encompassing complex concepts beyond their comprehension.”