First, the world is massively interconnected. From the deepest physics to the deepest metaphysics, the world is understood to be connected. Yet our economic system assumes all the parts are absolutely separate, in competition, to sink or thrive on it’s own. Competition denies the connection, and cooperation is actually illegal, and denigrated as “socialism”. This ignorance is now lethal and the root cause of the bankruptcy and bubble collapse we are now enduring.

Second, the world is non-linear, highly feedback, and chaotic. All the economic models are linear, which assumes that tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday. The fact that only linear equations were really solvable until recently, is part of the issue, but linear models leave the system unprepared for the non-linear expressions, like currency crashes or natural disasters. It is difficult to plan and prepare for such events, but prudent to consider them.

Third, money is an abstraction of real value, of no worth in itself. Hawkins, Lovins, and Lovins, in “Natural Capitalism”, identify real wealth systems as natural, social, and infrastructure. We have extracted wealth from these real systems, and concentrated the fiscal distribution to the point of destabilizing all life on the planet. Any investment in the real wealth systems will probably NOT generate a fiscal return.

Finally, financial planning has to recognize that the American economic empire peaked almost 40 years ago. This can be marked by two events. First, domestic oil production peaked, so we lost control of the price of oil, giving rise to OPEC. Second, the dollar was cut loose from gold, beginning decades of devaluation. We have shifted from a world lender to a world debtor, yet still spend resource on the trappings of empire.

I am very interested to hear what the speakers present, and will be listening from the perspective of the four points above.

Thanks for organizing this.