Catherine Austin Fitts Teleseminar
Last night's teleseminar with host Matthew Gilbert and guest Catherine Austin Fitts was engaging and inspirational. If you are interested in how you can personally change your financial situation and positively effect the energetic flow of currency, you will want to listen to the audio download, which will be available next week. (Available now as of 1.9.07)
During the interview, she talked about the economic "tapeworm" that is killing us and all living things — while we blindly feed the worm. We have to see the economic tapeworm and how it works parasitically in our lives. A tapeworm injects chemicals into a host that causes the host to crave what is good for the tapeworm, not the host. In America, we despair over our deterioration, but we still crave that which is killing us.
With every dollar we spend we are supporting the continued growth of the tapeworm (big business). It may seem overwhelming and feel like we have no ability to make a difference, but she said we can start to see our own power and leverage simply by looking at our bank deposits, our media attention, our purchases, our investments and recognize the equivalent of our real power by who we choose to give our power to in the form of our money. Catherine pointed out that this may take some time to research who owns the stores we like to shop in and the products we like to buy and discover what their policies and investments and business practices really are...but it will be time well spent. In general, if it's big and profitable, it's a tapeworm.
Catherine was the managing director of a major Wall Street financial services firm, Assistant Secretary of Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the first Bush adminstration, and founder of Hamilton Securities investment bank. She is currently president of Solari, Inc., a financial advisory company founded on the vision that investing in nature and in people, communities, and companies that we trust and reflect our deepest spiritual values will create "true wealth" and transform our world.
She mentioned an article she wrote “Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” as a case study designed to help illuminate the concept of the economic tapeworm and how the system works. It details the story of two teams with two competing visions for America. In one vision, America's aristocracy makes money by ensnaring youth in drugs and prisons and wins middle class support through a stream of government funding, contracts for War on Drugs activities and related stock profits. The growing debt used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets and manipulate the stock, gold and precious metals markets is more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class.
The second vision believes in the power of education, hard work and a new partnership between people, land and technology. This vision would allow us to pay down public and private debt and create new business, infrastructure and equity.
She said it is essential to put your money where your values are, invest your money in things or products that reflect your values. Many SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) funds actually have investments in companies like Halliburton! We have to do our homework and be intimate about our investments and expenditures. We need to understand and trust exactly where our money goes.
Catherine started Solari Investor Circles, private investment partnerships that practice financial intimacy — investing in people and products that we or our network know and trust. If we want clean water, fresh food, sustainable infrastructure, sound banks, lawful companies and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. We cannot invest in the stocks and bonds of large corporations and governments that are harming our food, water, environment and all living things and then expect these resources to be available when we need them. Nor can we deposit and do business with the banks that are bankrupting our government and economy.
She gave some practical advice for survival in the possibility of an economic collapse or a slow burn scenario. We need to increase self sufficiency. Pay down debt. If we can, live someplace with a well for water, grow our own food, decrease overhead, build equity. But most importantly she said we need to protect our time, that is our most precious resource. Turn off the TV and develop skills to be more self sufficient.
We need to pay more attention to where our money is going right now. She mentioned a group that she hasn't personally participated in but said if we have debt it may be an alternative to giving more money to the tapeworm, it is like eBay for personal loans prosper.com
I don't feel I've done justice to this interview, so you just have to listen to it yourself! Some of what is written above are quotes from Catherine's website. She's a dynamic speaker with some very practical "shifts" we can each do.
peace,
Angela
