News stories by Hazel Henderson, page 2

ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Jul 19 (IPS) - While debating a high frequency trader recently, I encountered the familiar rationalisations that high frequency trading (HFT) contributes to liquidity and price discovery in markets. Assertions about liquidity are hard to justify after the "flash crash" of May 6, 2010, where the "faux liquidity" of HFT disappeared when needed and the traditional market-making obligations of the old specialists were absent.

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act signed by President Barack Obama on April 4th, 2012, had been loaded with provisions pushed by Wall Street lobbyists to include "small" companies capitalised at up to one billion dollars and perverted by relaxing both requirements of Security and Exchange Commission reporting and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulations passed in response to the 2008 crisis, writes Hazel Henderson, author, president of Ethical Markets Media (United States and Brazil), creator of the Green Transition Scoreboard, and co-creator of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

The urgent need for a paradigm shift in economics and its financial and mathematical models has been widely recognized for decades. Recently, Credit Suisse research as well as complexity theorists at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich have demonstrated the concentration of companies in the current global economic system. They used network analysis of positive feedback effects (the network grows faster as more join, like Facebook). These dynamics also concentrate connectedness and produced a pattern: of the 50 largest companies in the world, 45 are financial intermediaries (‘ Global Finance Lost in Cyberspace"), writes Hazel Henderson, president of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) and author of many books.

High-speed trading and cloud computing have far outrun government oversight and control; can we learn to master our tools? The jury is still out, writes Hazel Henderson, author of award-winning "Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy" and other books, and founder and president of Ethical Markets Media.

'We recognize finance as part of the global commons,' affirms the Transforming Finance statement, signed by financial professionals worldwide critical of today's casino capital markets. Financialization has produced the global debt bubble. Needed now are write-offs and haircuts to bond-holders and bank shareholders, a curb on bettors buying credit default swaps, as well as below 1% financial transaction taxes to limit volatility and high-frequency trading by computers —now 60% of all transactions, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets:Growing the Green Economy and other books, and president of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil)

At last there seems to be real progress in overhauling the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as measure of a country's status and progress -almost twenty years after 170 governments pledged to do so by signing Article 40 of Agenda 21 at the 1992 Rio Conference, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy and president of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil).

The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Its global focus on CO2 emissions and trading schemes based in London and other financial centres has grown suspect, writes Hazel Henderson, author, president of Ethical Markets Media, and co-author of "Qualitative Growth"(2009).

World leaders like France's Sarkozy, Germany's Angela Merkel, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and China's Hu Jintao are calling for the reform and downsizing of the global casino at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, September 24-25, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, vice-chair of the global Climate Prosperity Alliance and co-organiser of the Beyond GDP Conference in the European Parliament in 2007.

A powerful new global player has emerged on the world stage: the Group of 192, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), president of Ethical Markets Media, an independent social enterprise covering local economies, new currencies, and the growing green sectors.

An outside-the-box approach is needed for the worsening problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan. US official policy in its war in Afghanistan is to combat Al Qaeda and make sure there are no further attacks on the USA from their safe havens. Yet, on his recent visit to the US, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that there are no Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, US Central Command Commander, also stated that no Al Qaeda members are in Afghanistan, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy and other books.