Juggling Dynamite

Last night on Charlie Rose, I caught this segment with Bill Browder, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management. He describes a deeply disturbing portrait of corruption and injustice in Russia today that extends from the Russian mafia through the police and courts. Lest we forget why a fair and impartial judicial system are paramount in protecting individual rights. Here is a direct link.

These are all steps needed in order to cut back the excess of finance and move the banking harpies back into the box supporting, rather than dominating and imploding, the real economy.

William Cohan, author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” and a Bloomberg View columnist, talks about Wall Street compensation and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Here is a direct link.

In the new post-credit bust era, there is less money to go around. Where capital flows, will dictate which businesses and communities thrive and which falter. This new wave of “protectionism” will mean lower global trade, but a focus on wasting less and recycling more cash flow back into the coffers of individual families, towns and countries, rather than to outside investors and foreign countries, is a trend that will continue for some time as the new normal. This means people and places with more domestic wealth, like North America, are likely to fare better than places with less domestic wealth, like Asia.

Residents in Bristol, England now have the option of swapping their traditional banknotes for the Bristol Pound, as part of a new scheme to try and boost the local economy. More than 350 firms in the city have signed up, making it the UK’s largest alternative to sterling.

But other local currencies have never really taken off, so can the Bristol scheme buck the trend? The BBC reports. Here is a direct link.