George Soros

[Mike Sandler]

Hi FEASTA folks,

Does anyone know George Soros?
He is starting to throw hundreds of millions of dollars toward research into "discovering" the solutions that we have been trying to promote.
If anyone wants to collaborate on an international proposal for Cap and Share (I'll be the U.S. arm), let me know.
The monetary reform people should contact George also.

-Mike Sandler
San Rafael, California, USA
www.carbonshare.org

http://www.newsweek.com/id/219720

Financier George Soros announced a $50 million effort [starting with]gathering some of the leading practitioners of the market-skeptic school, who were marginalized during the era of "free-market fundamentalism," among them Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees. He's also creating an "Institute for New Economic Thinking" to make research grants, convene symposiums, and establish a journal, all in an effort to take back the economics profession from the champions of free-market zealotry who have dominated it for decades, and to correct the failures of decades of market deregulation. Soros hopes matching funds will bring the total endowment up to $200 million. "Economics has failed not only to predict and explain what happened but has also failed to protect society," says Robert Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, who will direct the new institute. "That's what the crisis revealed. The paradigm has failed. There is no guidance."

http://www.thebreakthrough.org/blog/200 ... ding.shtml

In his speech announcing his new climate initiative, George Soros criticized emissions trading because it allows financial firms to manipulate the process. He announced a policy advocacy center, funded at $10 million per year, to be headed by Thomas Heller, a legal scholar who wrote a long critique, 'Beyond Kyoto,' criticizing the treaty framework as largely unworkable for Pew in 2003. Heller criticizes the framework for being inadequate to engage developing countries, faults offsets as unable to solve the additionality problem, and promotes a sector-based alternative similar to the one advocated by Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado. Soros' speech and Heller's role give new momentum to those who have argued that the focus on emissions targets and timetables is fundamentally flawed in that it fails to recognize the development needs of poor countries and the lack of cheap clean energy technology to replace fossil fuels.