There are innumerable expert opinions available these days about solutions to our current economic crisis. But are those solutions just band-aid solutions? How did we get here? What is money at its root? What are the problems with interest?
Money As Debt offers a different perspective on the basic principles of the current financial system. Watch the full 80-minute Promises Unleashed series online to better understand the historical
By Jim Selman | Bio
I confess to be among those who have some difficulty getting my head around how much a trillion dollars is. I can remember a book I read to my daughter called How Much is a Billion that was filled with mind-boggling examples, including things like the number of seconds that have passed since Jesus was born. The Huffington Post has a fun video clip visualizing a trillion using the same kinds of illuminating examples, such as a trillion dollars is enough to buy a Starbucks Latte every day for the next 900 million years. The only problem with these kinds of illustrations is that I can’t get my head around 900 million years either, let alone roughly 3 billion lattes.The punch line of this little clip is that as big as a trillion is (what some suggest is becoming the ‘new billion’), the current bailout is 10 times bigger. Can you imagine how big a zillion must be? It seems to me that when we enter the realm of staggering numbers that are beyond comprehension such as these, money stops meaning anything. This could be a good thing, since when we exceed the limits of what we can comprehend we often transform our relationship to
By Jim Selman | Bio
I was recording a podcast recently in response to the question of how ‘elders’ should be dealing with money these days given the current and projected economic mess. The woman I was speaking to was clearly ‘worried’ about her financial future. I started my response by sharing that over many years of coaching I sometimes chuckle when speaking with women because they all seem to have a generic fear of becoming a ‘bag lady’. There was an interesting article in the Toronto Globe and Mail in December titled, “Why women look in the mirror and a bag lady looks back”. It seems this archetype pervades a lot of women’s deepest fears of failure and becoming destitute.To be sure it isn’t funny if it happens; however, for the vast majority of women this isn’t going to happen. Yet the fear of it lingers on. My response to the question was that, while I have no particular expertise in money management, I do have something to say about how we relate to money—however much we may have or not have. People should consult qualified financial advisors at as young an age as possible and responsibly invest in their financial future.
With respect
I was having a conversation today with the Board of a not-for-profit organization and one of the participants noted that they “needed to have more younger people” on the Board. I asked “Why?” Her response was that she was at an age (which I judged to be around 60) when she had a lot of commitments, she needed to keep earning money and just didn’t have as much time and energy to give. She went on to say that younger people had more time, less need for money, and lots more energy
Yesterday was Philanthropy Day. I went to a luncheon for 1,300 people in San Francisco hosted by one of my favorite ‘causes’, the Pachamama Alliance. The organization was founded 12 years ago by Bill and Lynne Twist as a partnership between the indigenous peoples of the Rainforest and the modern world. They prefer to say the Alliance found them. The purpose of the Alliance is to create a world that is “environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just”. It would seem