Slow Money Now!

“Eles são muitos, mas não podem voar”, Ednardo.

“They are many, but can’t fly”, in ‘Pavão Misterioso’ (Mysterious Peacock)by Ednardo, Brazilian musician, early 80s.

In October 2004, I was interviewed for a PA position to real estate managers at one of the largest financial and stock market corporations. Right there, at the heart of Canary Wharf in London. I was ready for the take, well trained by my agency. The lovely office manager escorted me into a huge meeting room. As the two Dutch managers entered it, the taller one’s first gesture was to raise his right hand with two fingers forming the heavy metal symbol and shouting at the same time: ‘Sepultura!!!’ I smiled (laughing inside). He was - and I bet still is - blond, very tall, reminding me of a rugby player, and a huge fan of hard rock music. What counted for the role, I ended up guessing, was the fact that, in the end of the last page of my PA focused CV, I mentioned working as a rock-pop reporter during the 80s in Brazil-São Paulo.

That company was one of the best working places I enjoyed in London. In 2004, I had just started a social micro-enterprise, To Be Tupi, with my friend Tina Leme. The clever name, which makes sense to us, but not so much to foreigners, was suggested by Brazilian rock-pop icon Arnaldo Dias Baptista. In this financial corporation – and around London during the next six years - I found an open door for entrepreneurial people. I especially appreciated the support of the girls in that office, always asking me to bring in the wonderfully handcrafted pieces by Brazilian artisans and spread them over the tables. The managers I worked for were self-sufficient so there was always a bit of time left during working hours.

Once I received a shot email addressed to the company’s staff and contributors, inviting them for an afternoon course about something in the line of: ‘our business – for starters’. I subscribed to it.

I cannot remember very well the whole speech, but what puzzled me was the pyramid drawn by the speaker, which he divided in three horizontal lines. He said/explained: “here, at the bottom of the pyramid, are our silver clients; in the middle, our gold clients; and at the top, our platinum clients”. I immediately asked myself: ‘where are the iron clients? That pyramid had no foundations, it could not sustain itself, it would float over (us) until one day it would crash down, slipping, sliding and crumbling.

I could not stop thinking in this way, perhaps influenced by the civil engineering dimension in my life at the time. All of us know that the stock market is worse than a casino. It deals with money that does not exist. It is a system which excludes most of the world’s population, which doesn’t explain clearly the mechanics behind it or its purpose and does not answer those endlessly asked questions: Why has it to be this way? Who really benefits from this system?

One might agree that we are witnessing a very important historical moment. It is an opportunity to reinvent the way we speak to and share with each other, both commercially and financially. There is a chance to join forces with those who can really make a difference, that is the good-hearted, generous majority of people all around the globe, who are ready to make something better than this madness.

The Western way of life, which is picking over its own mistakes, has great attributes of intelligence and a sense of art and beauty expressed by its rebellious people and their desire for freedom, change and choice. But it has also brought us a lot of violence, pain and submission, with politics and wars that minimize and undermine our intelligence and self-steem, overwhelming us with a state of fear, using the methods of Hollywood and Big Brother to do so, with governments manipulating violence through the control of military force and even plunging their hands into one of the dirtiest business worldwide, that is the whole ugly marriage between guns and drugs.

God bless us! ‘God bless this mess!’, paraphrasing an ironic saying by Arnaldo Dias Baptista.

There are clever people out there capable of discovering new ways of ordering, or perhaps I should say liberating, the world. And I believe most people now do know by pain but also by heart - there is too much money in the hands of a few; there is too much concentration of money; it is a very unfair and dark system, driven by its own greed, no matter how hard it tries to be good.

I told young Olivia Lang and her boyfriend the other day that the Brazilian hardcore icon, João Gordo, returned in the 80s from his first tour around European clubs wearing a jacket inscribed NO MONEY. “Today we say SLOW MONEY”, she told me, talking about their generation.

In London, I also remember working for another financial corporation, less heavy weight than the other, but nevertheless a player. Once I asked one of the team’s executives how investments in the social arena would fit into their business. “This word social is not part of our vocabulary”, was his response. At this point 2008 was yet to happen and 2011 looked far away – all the big companies were still seated comfortably but in his answer one could see that the bottom line was there.

Stop the train! We want to get out!

It is time to change.

If we do nothing, they will find a way to deceive us and keep business as always.

Enough is enough.

All we need is:

>inclusiveness, peace, freedom

>human rights and respect for the environment

>creativeness, sharing, community empowerment

>DIY

>Solidarity!

>Love!


(thanks to the fine English touch of Brigitte Istim)