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The Associative Economics Bulletin consists of news and views on associative economics, including short extracts from Associative Economics Monthly (available electronically for £1 an issue at www.cfae.biz/aem or in a hard copy format - tel (UK) 01227 738207).

Regulate or Rethink? - Associative Economics Bulletin - October 2008

The Associative Economics Bulletin consists of news and views on associative economics, including short extracts from Associative Economics Monthly (available electronically for 1GBP an issue at www.cfae.biz/aem or in a hard copy format - tel (UK) 01227 738207. To unsubscribe from this list, reply or send an email to ame@cfae.biz with 'bulletin unsubscribe' in the subject line.

1.    Associative Economics at The London School of Economics Oct-Dec 2008
2.    Forthcoming Events
3.    Regulate or Rethink - Associative Economics Monthly October 2008
4.    Friends of Associative Economics

1) ASSOCIATIVE ECONOMICS AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS OCT-DEC 2008

Today's events call for a sea-change in our understanding of economic life, taking us beyond the economics of nations and politics into a world in which economic life is seen as a single global reality and the concern of humanity as a whole, rather than particular classes, groups or countries. Full details at www.cfae.biz

Thursday 9th October:  Beyond the Market - An associative economic view of history / Initiative and Responsibility - Starting with the individual
Thursday 6th November: The Significance of Form  and the role of the corporation / The Monetary Economy and the need for differentiated money
Thursday 4th December: Deep Accounting - How money and accounting became one / Collaboration without Collusion - Coordination through conscious finance

2) FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Thursday 9th October: AE@LSE (see above)
Sunday 26th October, Stroud UK, Money Unveiled. See arthuredwards.net
31 October - 2 November, Colours of Money Seminar in Australia  Melbourne.
Thursday 6th November, AE@LSE (see above)
Friday 7th November, Lydney Glos. UK, Capital and Human Needs. See arthuredwards.net
27 - 30 November. Colours of Money Seminar in Finland Helsinki
Thursday 4th December, AE@LSE (see above)

3)  REGULATE OR RETHINK - ASSOCIATIVE ECONOMICS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2008

In the main item, Play the Man not the Market, this question [of regulation in finance] is walked around by way of three different perspectives. De Grauwe adovates the widespread feeling that greater regulation is needed. But is it the market itself or the techniques that are the fundamental problem or the intents and behaviour of human beings?

Alan Greenspan, by contrast, suggests that, underlying the markets, it is to human nature with its “propensity to swing from fear to euphoria and back” that we must look. But does human nature immutably fix us in its working, as argued by Ayn Rand’s objectivism, a philosophy celebrating the pursuit of egotistic ends to which Greenspan is party?

Randall’s description of Hoare and Co is interesting in this regard. Here is a bank run by people who “are not interested in getting bigger just for its own sake.” A demonstration, presumably, that human beings, of the banker variety no less!, can constrain themselves in today’s boundaryless financial environment.

In this vein, in Lend to The Man, Not The Asset, this month’s Sign of the Times draws attention to Chris Meakin’s explanation of how banking practice in a previous era was able to base itself on recognition of human qualities by distinguishing between due and undue credit. It is by means of such a distinction, what associative economics calls ‘inherent regulation’, working largely through clear accounting and money management, that humanity could overcome the fictionalisation of asset value that is rife today.

Cue Rudolf Steiner’s idea of ethical individualism, in which not only is the thought given credence that one can work upon one’s own nature, but that equally one can - indeed ought to - cultivate an interest in the lives of others. It is upon such a fundamental attitude that any attempts at reform must be based if they are to do any more than redecorate the edifice of ‘global financial architecture’.

In the feature item, Interest: money or people?, Steiner describes how the practice of banking is a corollary of the lack of interest in the reality of other people’s circumstances and with the depersonalisation of finance that took place in the 19th century an economic life has grown up conducted entirely in the abstract. The idea of interest on money is but a sign of this abstraction.

The Friends’ Page is mainly news of events, but has a theme of moving towards a more active interface with modern policy fora.

Finally, our AE-Hero column, reminds us of Hyman Minsky and his observation that it is regulation that begets the innovation by which it is circumvented. If finance is by nature volatile, attempting to contain it by edict may therefore be a self-defeating strategy.

Accounting Corner this month touches on the current financial crisis in a way that argues for a little less of what we fancy, a lot more of what we imagine…

4.    FRIENDS OF ASSOCIATIVE ECONOMICS

The Friends of Associative Economics is a virtual community that exists to encourage the development of the associative economics paradigm. Friends receive the regular Associative Economics Bulletin and a free annual subscription to Associative Economics Monthly (in electronic format) - two main media for keeping in touch with developments in the associative economics world. See aefriends.com