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Local Dollars, Local Sense : How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achiev...

ISBN: 9781603583435 | 1603583432

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co
Pub. Date: 4/20/2011

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Summary

The $15 Trillion Shiftby Michael Shuman probes the future of investing-making the case for investors to put their money into building local businesses and food and energy systems, and otherwise creating healthy regional economies that meet the stresses of a post-peak-oil world. The book tells readers how to find or develop opportunities for investing locally, explains the obstacles, and introduces readers to investors who have taken on the challenge and put their theories about local investing into action. Shuman builds upon a simple premise: A... MOREmerica's investment system is broken-and not in the way most people think. Even though roughly half the jobs and the output in the economy come from local small business, almost none of our investment dollars go into the sector. All the production in the United States each year, the gross domestic product (GDP), currently totals about $13 trillion. But the overall wealth of the country is nearly $100 trillion. Some of this wealth is held in the form of land, buildings, and machinery- not very easy to convert into dollars. The most liquid assets are stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, and life insurance funds, and these total about $30 trillion. This is where most Americans place their life savings. And not even 1 percent of these savings touch local small business. Because local firms are often more profitable than larger corporations and their competitiveness is growing, says Shuman, this represents a huge market failure. It means that Americans are systematically overinvesting in global business and underinvesting in local business. Were these $30 trillion allocated more efficiently, Shuman writes, at least $15 trillion would move into the local economy. This, then, is the $15 trillion shift. To conceive what this money could do for communities, consider this: $15 trillion is nearly twenty times more than all the money the federal government allocated in the national stimulus program of 2009-2010. It also represents about $50,000 for every American. For even a small town of 5,000, it represents an investment pool of $250 million. What stands in the way of this shift, if local businesses are in fact competitive and profitable? The answer is that we have obsolete institutions and laws that make local investment extremely difficult and expensive. This book gives interested investors and community leaders a way to overcome such obstacles, and create funds and networks to generate sustainable, living economies.

Thousands of people across the nation are taking to the streets to say theyre fed up with the reckless behavior of Wall Street. But the vast majority of Americans still have their money tied up theredespite the fact that they might despise some of the corporate deeds their investments support. That doesnt have to be the case, though, says Local Dollars, Local Sense author Michael Shuman. If Americans transferred just a fraction of the $26 trillion they invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, and life insurance funds to local small businesses in search of funding, average return on investments would improve, communities would strengthen, and jobs would increase dramatically. All evidence supports this. So, whats stopping us? For one thing, SEC regulations prohibit nearly 99 percent of Americans from investing directly in local businesses. People, though, are developing creative ways to get around those rules. And Shumanan economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur at the forefront of building local economiesdelivers the most thorough overview available of how to invest locally, explaining the options and obstacles and profiling the investors who have paved the way. He describes in detail how people can engage, at all levels, in institutional lending, investment clubs and networks, local investment funds, community ownership, direct public offerings, crowdfunding, local stock exchanges and more. He also guides readers through the lucrative opportunities to invest locally in their homes, energy efficiency, and themselves.

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