Blog Archive

Legalize Localization: Post-Meltdown Thoughts (Part I)

Alissa — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:59:19 -0800

Posted on November 11, 2008

As the global financial system destroys decades' worth of Americans' savings, the relative calm and stability surrounding community-based financial institutions is striking. Locally owned banks and credit unions, which rarely got involved with predatory loans or resold their loans on global markets, are faring remarkably well. The founders of e3bank, a new ecological bank in Philadelphia, believe that they now will have an easier time raising necessary capital. The Rudolph Steiner Foundation's business loan funds, underwritten by their anthroposophy-minded investors, expect most of their client businesses – all carefully selected for their strong social and community character – to fare reasonably well.

In my last blog entry I suggested the importance of expanding the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) from banks to all kinds of financial institutions, including bond issuers, mortgage and consumer credit companies, insurers, and mutual, pension, venture, and hedge funds. All these institutions should be required to disclose where their investments are going (to reveal how much, if any, of their capital stays local) and be incentivized to invest more locally (the CRA conditions mergers or expansion on good community performance).

Several weeks of further deterioration of my own pension funds have convinced me that CRA expansion is, ultimately, less important than a total reinvention of the U.S. financial systems. The CRA is about altering the behavior of financial institutions that are not typically locally owned – about pushing, guilt-tripping, even extorting them into slightly better behavior. What we really need is to replace these players altogether. — read more

Congress Should Expand the Community Reinvestment Act

Alissa — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:42:03 -0700

Posted on September 30, 2008

Congress thinks it's about to "solve" the nation's deepening financial crisis with a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. What's being overlooked is that one of the fundamental causes is the erosion of place-based investing. And a fundamental solution has to be an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). — read more

Nuclear Power Doesn’t Belong In Our Energy Mix

Alissa — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:09:26 -0700

Posted on September 18, 2008

The presidential season usually brings silly proposals, but a particularly atrocious idea this year is to revive nuclear power. John McCain deserves an "F" for wanting to build 45 new nuclear plants, and Barack Obama no better than a "C" for failing to criticize McCain's position with any coherence. — read more

Herbie the Love Bug Rides Again! 'Local First’ movement revs up to rock—and save—our world

Alissa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:24:18 -0700

By Guest Commentator Patty Cantrell
Posted on July 18, 2008

It is 1974 in Springfield, Missouri, and they are still showing movies downtown at a theater on the city's Park Central Square. I am 10 years old, and my sister and I are thrilled to be out on that sweltering summer night with our very cool Aunt Robin and Uncle Romie. We're off to see Herbie the Love Bug Rides Again. The smash Disney hit is about a lovable, racing-striped Volkswagen Beetle who saves a little old lady and her historic home from the wrecking ball of "progress." — read more

Slipped LISC: Is Any Development Good for Urban America?

Alissa — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:53:39 -0700

By Guest Commentator Amy Kedron
Posted on June 27, 2008

To be sure, many urban neighborhoods are in dire need of development resources. But there is a difference between "economic development" and "community economic development." The former is often driven by private interests, primarily for private gain; the latter is community-driven and aims to empower communities. — read more

Not-So-Fast Company: Elizabeth Spiers

Alissa — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:22:59 -0700

Posted on May 28, 2008

I was tempted to fire off a letter to the editors at Fast Company, suggesting a better fact checker before they publish commentaries like Elizabeth Spiers' "Not So Fast: Neighborhoodlums" (June 2008, p. 128), the latest mass-media sneer at local-first campaigns. But it finally dawned on me that the piece actually contains no facts whatsoever. — read more

Can U.S. Labor Embrace Local?

Alissa — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:23:00 -0700

Posted on May 7, 2008

Will organized labor finally make its peace with local business? Having just addressed the annual convention of the British Columbia-branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – the largest union in the country – I'm pleased to report that the answer is increasingly "yes," if we’re willing to learn from our wise neighbors to the north. — read more

Food Miles Still Matter

Alissa — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:45:51 -0700

Posted on April 24, 2008

Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center at Iowa State University and one of the pioneers of the concept of "food miles," is the first to concede that it's smarter to assess the environmental impact of a food item over its entire lifetime. That means looking not only at transportation impacts but also those of production and distribution. — read more

The Beginning of the End of Wal-Mart?

Alissa — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:27:55 -0700

Posted on April 11, 2008

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest big box store, has recently been knocked down by a one-two punch of deepening recession and declining sales growth. According to Al Norman, the founder of Sprawl-Busters, Wal-Mart has abandoned 45 superstore projects over the last 10 months, and citizen groups have killed another 19. This loss – 64 stores in all – is unprecedented, and suggests that the retailing giant may have hit a wall in the United States. — read more

Economists Gone Wild #1: Art Woolf

Alissa — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:15:13 -0700

Posted on April 3, 2008

A periodic feature of this blog will be to scrutinize economists whose arguments are selling communities short. The subtitle for the series might be: "Hey, they don’t call it the dismal science for nothing." — read more