Knock Your Socks Off Numbers from Howard Finklestein

Yesterday I was privileged to attend a high level Microfinance event, co-chaired by Howard Finklestein, a very inspiring lawyer who now focuses on Microfinance. Here are some excerpts from his talk, which will make you - next time you have money to invest - go straight to www.microplace.com and loan, for a modest profit, to third world entrepreneurs. Beats losing 40% of your portfolio on subprime loans.... The double standard is astonishingly ironic of course. Third world borrowers of amounts like $100 are more heavily vetted and monitored than folks borrowing a few $100K in the United States, and those imprudent LENDERS brought our whole world economy down. Here are Howard's reflections:

GreenMicrofinance was out in force at the 3rd Microfinance East Conference in NYC, co-chaired by the New York Microfinance Club leaders Howard Finklestein and Bhakti Mirchandam. The black cloud of the "financial situation", a condition that was described in numerous ways over the course of the day's many dynamic and informative speakers, was never far from anyone's consciousness. Microfinance has been spared the worst, which is pretty good news.

Howard shared some amazing numbers to kick the event off.

30% of last year's conference speakers have switched jobs.

Of all the money invested in MIV (Microfinance Investment Vehicles) in the last 7 years since their inceptions, the amount of money lost is $0.00.

The amount left in Madoff investors' accounts: $0.00.

The approximate value of stocks like GM: $.10 on the dollar.

The value of MIV investments: 100% of capital + interest.

The number of US pension funds invested in MIVs - 2.

The number of US Foundation Endowments invested MIV's - 1.

Howard looked around the room and gave a sort of benediction: there are so many smart, passionate, capable people here, all forced to spend their time chasing after investment. Investors should be chasing them! Greed triumphed over prudence, and EVERYONE LOST, RICH AND POOR.

By the way, Howard pointed out that Kiva, which has been quite the success, really sends a wrong message. Microfinance can be a profitable investment. It doesn't need to be charity, and we will never meet the credit needs of the world's billions of poor by donations alone.

So let's hope 2009 is different!

Check Me Out on Get Rich Slowly

Today Get Rich Slowly - isn't that a fabulous name for a blog? - features my column today on planned obsolescence and appliance repair. It's not a sustainability sight, so eco-considerations are not paramount, but generally what is frugal is also green. Lots of great ideas are included in the comments, and my experience is that since JD gets thousands of hits every day, those comments just keep on coming. (So far I didn't get dinged like the time I wrote about wedding registries! Some people thought I was the most idiotic wedding guest in history, imagining that I might pick a gift a couple would like that wasn't on their registry!)
Check out The Repair Clinic. It was recommended by a reader who loves using it - it was heartening how many folks take time to fix things and find it a very satisfying experience. And next time you need a toaster, but a Sunbeam on Ebay! They last 50 years+. We've been through at least 4 toasters in 35 years.

Welcome to America's First Green President

It's truly thrilling that America has a black president. But what is equally thrilling to me is: America has a green president. By rights, Al Gore should have been our first green president, but beteween a series of flukes and the Supreme Court voting Bush in, we all know how that ended up. Today I feel an immense sense of relief. Finally, all the people working so hard to fight global warming and advocating for clean energy tech, environmental stewardship, and accountability for our profligate use of resources are swimming in the MAINSTREAM, not using our precious energy and money swimming upstream, fighting our own government. Bush, and his global warming denials and irresponsible policy of shopping and guzzling oil is on his way back to Texas to his 8,000 square foot home.
Now our efforts, organizing, and activism will go towards actually solving our problems, not just trying to prevent our country from moving backward. May all our work - President Obama [fun to write!!] and all his cabinet and all their staffs, and everyone who works hard to repair our world - be richly rewarded.

Your Used Sneakers Fund Sustainable Farming in Africa

What to do with used sneakers? If you happen to have 600 pairs, you alone can set a Ghanian family up in sustainable farming, through a cool organization called PPPF Africa, - Perpetual Prosperity Pumps Foundation.
Here's the deal:
1. There are collection recepticles around the NorthEastern US. You can locate them on the site.
People drop their "used but not abused" sneakers in them.
2. Eventually these sneakers are shipped to Ghana where they are resold. Most Ghanians cannot afford new sneakers, let alone multiple pairs....
3. The proceeds from the sale of 600 pairs pays for a small farmer to receive a M.O.R.E. module, the video shown above. Modular Organic Regenerative Environments include livestock, a well, irrigation, 50 fruit trees and all kinds of other inputs which will allow a family multiple harvests a year, all achieved sustainably, so there is no environmental harm. I imagine planting the trees helps to maintain the water table? The 1200 running shoes generate approximately $1800.
If you're inspired, they will help you set up a collection receptacle. It's a great project for a school class, a club, or faith-based group. Perfect for colleges at the end of the year when students are jettisoning everything possible!
Founder Jim Riordan has a background in sustainable agriculture in developing countries. It's run by a handful of dedicated people, with a fun slogan:
Please Help Shoe-In Prosperity!

2% Cash Back Credit Cards Featured in the New York Times

Last week an email scudded into my inbox, telling me I have three months to use my hard-earned US Air miles, or they expire unless I book another US Air flight before their end-of-life date. Their life cycle is now down to 18 months! It only makes sense to book if I have somewhere I need to go, so this is yet another way in which this particular airline, which hogs 2/3 of the flights in Philadelphia, infuriates me.
So Ron Lieber's article today in the New York Times on loyalty bonus clubs caught me eye. He is more of a fan than I am, for sure. His take is that free miles and hotel rooms help you afford travel treats you wouldn't have the money to pay for; my take is that if you're tight for cash, discretionary travel is not a great idea.
However, I did note his report on two credit card offerings, no-fee, which offer 2% cash back. One problem in changing credit cards is that if you have automatic payments, they all go haywire when you change your account, and it generates a lot of work. But you may want to consider these, they sound like good deals. Note that American Express is not accepted universally.

So perhaps the biggest news of 2008 was the introduction of two new cash-back credit cards, the Fidelity Retirement Rewards American Express card and the Schwab Bank Invest First Visa Signature card. Both earn 2 percent cash back on all purchases, with no annual fee and no limit on what you can earn each year. Many cash-back cards yield just 1 percent, though some offer more at the grocery store or gas station.
Two percent cash-back cards have come and gone over the years, and they tend to disappear because they’re simply not profitable for the card companies. Fidelity and Schwab, however, may be willing to maintain the new rebates in an effort to attract new customers and keep the ones they have. Fidelity encourages cardholders to deposit their cash back in a Fidelity individual retirement account, while Schwab forces you to put the money in one of its Schwab One brokerage accounts.

Stating the obvious, this is only a good idea if you pay your bills on time and avoid credit card interest rates.
Interestingly, one of the most popular blog posts I've ever written - it gets hits most every day - was about how much I hated dealing with the Advanta Credit Card company. Apparently I am not alone in this! In fact, LOL, when I typed "I Hate Advanta" into google, the name of that post, I see it's #1. People pay for that position. I have never heard from Advanta. Just more proof of their lack of interest in making customers happy.

Eco-Epiphanies: Personal Wastefulness and Societal Stupidity

For some, deep ecological truths are, looking back, arrived at in spectacular natural settings or dramatic experiences. For me, two anecdotes stand out as clearly pivotal, changing my thinking and my behaviors – hence, eco-epiphanies. The first was nearly twenty years ago, listening to Rabbi Arthur Green’s Yom Kippur sermon. I have no recollection what exactly his topic was, but his line: “American disposals are better nourished than many people with whom we share this earth” was so true and so jarring, that I vowed to start recycling that minute. (I didn't yet know about composting - recycling was then cutting edge!) Step by step, year-by-year, my consciousness about waste grew, until I became an environmental activist – fortunately, along with many others. However, I still thought of waste as a personal matter, that I should be more careful not to waste food to begin with, buy less packaging, that sort of thing. Virtue, as Dick Cheney would call it.

The second truth arrived in a story about Sudanese refugees, teenage boys settling in the United States. Survivors of great trauma, all orphans who had lived in refugee camps for many years, they were brought here and settled by Lutheran Services. Social workers helped them adjust, and it was educational for both these “Lost Boys” and those who helped them. One woman described taking them to a Big Box store to outfit them with American necessities. They stopped to look at a wall of hair dryers, unfamiliar to her charges.

On their first afternoon together, she took them to Wal-Mart for clothes. They gaped at the endless rows of textiles and gadgets, including some that looked like futuristic handguns. “Those are hair dryers,” Bernstein explained. Benson couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Why would you buy a machine to dry your hair? It dries on its own.

Somehow that shocked me into awareness of how ridiculous much of our consumption is – looking at it through the eyes of the world’s have-nots. We Americans live in a bubble. We don’t question basic assumptions about how we use resources, and allow ourselves to be absurdly wasteful, spending time, money, and natural resources to do things that don’t need to be done to begin with! We could live a high quality of life much more resource efficiently, and certainly will need to do so if the planet is to survive the onslaught of the results of our over-consumption.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a world which looks very different – many Americans are in fact being forced to get by with less. It is interesting to watch Americans driving less, for example. Is this change do to:

1. People coming to their senses, at long last?
2. People, being unemployed, are not commuting to work?
3. People going out less on discretionary buying expeditions, due to financial anxiety
4. Or people actually having less income, changing their spending behaviors?

Clearly, for many of us, the recent experience of economic contraction is unprecedented. The same behaviors being touted for saving money are identical to those which save natural resources and decrease carbon emissions. Perhaps the new habits folks are acquiring can be reinforced by public policy, incentivizing our consumption in ways which will, while not cutting into our quality of life, will make us wiser consumers and better world citizens. Better late than never….

Photo from OSOCIO

Over the winter break, my family traveled to Guatemala, a lush, beautiful country, recovering from a 35-year civil war which of course hampered its development. Guatemala's biggest sources of dollars are remittances from Guatemalan emigres (20,000 of whom have recently been deported from the US back to Guatemala, thank you President Bush) and tourism.

Mindful of what I've learned about the lack of energy infrastructure in the developing world and the impacts of energy poverty, through my work at GreenMicrofinance, I looked for things that typical travelers don't pay attention to - like electric outlets and light bulbs.

The most dramatic leg of our trip was flying north to Flores and continuing on another hour's drive to the Tikal National Park, home of the ancient Maya city of Tikal which is in the middle of a subtropical rainforest. Tourists get a double treat - a nature preserve with koatis, spider monkeys, and countless birds, along with one of the world's great archeological sites. This ancient city which once housed over 100,000 residents collapsed around 900. Its downfall is described in a chapter in Jared Diamond's Collapse. Diamond elaborates on research which suggests the city was abandoned after extensive droughts rendered its fragile agriculture unsustainable. Tikal has an elaborate water system, now excavated and working perfectly after 1200 years with just a coating of limestone to seal it, which contained an 18 month water supply. So two years of drought did it in. A contributing factor to the drought was deforestation for agriculture - a lesson to be heeded in our time.

We stayed at the lovely Jungle Lodge, one of 3 lodges in the National Park. The park is off-grid. During the day, one doesn't really notice, since they provide their own power by diesel generator. However, when we tried to order ice cream, our server shrugged and explained, "In Tikal we have no freezers." This of course is because freezers require a huge amount of energy, 24/7, something we take for granted in North America. For dinner we walked to another lodge a few hundred feet away - in total darkness. The lodges have their own electrical generators, but there are no overhead lights - just guards with flashlights. arker than any of us had ever experienced. Another reminder of how hard it is for us all to appreciate and understand how precious electric lighting is!