Inventing Slow Money

Putting the Brakes on Fast Money

We need to build a culture that stands as a radiant counterpoint to our dominant hurry-up culture. We need to bring our culture down to earth—and I mean this literally.

Slow MoneyWe need to replenish the soil; we need to remember our connection to the soil; we need to support our local food system; we need to participate in and celebrate the authentic local culture that emerges from these many connections and awarenesses; and we also need to build the financial infrastructure that will enable all this to thrive.

The core wound we’re trying to heal is the bifurcation of finance and social purpose.

For a century or more, the two have been totally separated.

Why not invent a new kind of municipal bond that would let people invest locally and regionally?

“Entrepreneurs and farmers are the poets of the economy. They are holders of ambiguity and risk. They cultivate interstitial spaces, where demand and need and aspiration coexist in a mildly turbulent state of chaotic possibility. They continuously test the boundaries of quality and quantity, as a poet tests the boundaries of denotation and connotation. Ideas in a business plan; seeds in potting soil; rhymes in search of new reasons.”

As it circulates the globe with ever-accelerating speed, money is sucking oxygen out of the air, fertility out of the soil and culture out of local communities.

Radiant Counterpoint: Our America.