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[10/7/2017 11:57:38 AM] Peter Burgess: I have incredibly good news ... time to party !
[10/8/2017 1:59:51 AM] Claudia Freed: Peter, I am in Wisconsin with my friends of 35 years in a cabin. I'll be back to Chicago tomorrow. I'll reach out then!
[10/10/2017 8:40:02 PM] Claudia Freed: Hi Peter,I hope all is well. I am home now and leaving for washington DC tomorrow afternoon. Tell me the good news!!!!
[8:30:16 AM] Peter Burgess: The wine arrived safely on Saturday morning!
[8:30:41 AM] Claudia Freed: Fantastic! Don't drink it for breakfast!
[8:30:48 AM] Peter Burgess: I did not realize your trip to Wisconsin with your young college friends was going to be a week!
[8:31:32 AM] Claudia Freed: Friday through Sunday. I am back in Chicago and leave this afternoon for my final class at Johns Hopkins in Washington DC
[8:32:39 AM] Peter Burgess: I have had many trips into Manhattan to various events .. and meeting lots of people ... yesterday was at NYU
[8:34:21 AM] Peter Burgess: ... where Africa House was hosting a visit by the {President of the American Export Import Bank based in Cairo ... and it turns out they are struggling with the challenge of measuring their social and environmental (mainly social) impact!
[8:36:58 AM] Claudia Freed: Funny topic. My class topic is about measurement and materiality. Is there ANYBODY getting this right?
[8:47:05 AM] Peter Burgess: Yesterday ... or was it Monday ... the Nobel Prize in Economics went to a hehavioral economist Richard Thaler at the University of Chicago (Booth) and some of his thinking fits with what TVIA wants to do! I don't know whether he has described broad ideas of actually put some numbers around the relationships between human behavior and economic money. I like my thinking around a baby = 1 million and me at an advanced almost fully depreciated life is maybe (if I am lucky) around 100,000. I like the idea of the present value of contribution (to society) and the present value of future cost of living. Under this thinking adding capability to a young person has huge value while keeping an old person alive on all sorts of life support ... not so much! Yes the value of family ties and love is worth something ... but not the amounts sometimes involved.
[8:50:41 AM] Peter Burgess: With regard to environment ... I think the idea of a carbon MARKET is a complete waste of time to. Yes ... real transactions and exchange do create value add (terms of trade / comparative advantage / and all that) but financial markets only move wealth around, and the so called carbon market is part of a financial market ... and has totally failed!
[8:52:25 AM] Peter Burgess: However, the scientists have measured all sorts of thing in the natural world with incredible precision ... but the scientists have never done anything to compile a comparative valuation of relative importance. This is the first step to getting a summary number for all of it.
[8:52:59 AM] Claudia Freed: What do you think about Green Bonds? Shifting risk from regulatory capital holds and freeing these funds to invest in green activities. Mariner (a global hedge fund)just did a $3 billion deal with Credite Agricole. Innovation or grasping for an idea???
[8:53:37 AM] Peter Burgess: May ... just maybe ... the Earth Institute at Columbia (Jeffrey Sachs / Lisa Sachs ) may buy into doing this!
[8:56:07 AM] Peter Burgess: With regard to Green Bonds they really don't change the game. They are really just a sub-set of ordinary bonds, unless I am much mistaken, and give investors who already have money a way to feel good about putting their money to work on doing good at a far lower rate of financial return!
[8:56:14 AM] Claudia Freed: Have a look...www.marinerinvestment.com
[8:57:53 AM] Claudia Freed: The reference on tge Credit Agricole deal is at www.institutionalinvestor.com
[8:59:50 AM] Peter Burgess: Re MarinerInvestment.com ... did you notive that they are as signatory to PRI? I have started a conversation with the CEO of PRI about measuring impact as opposed to what is going on now which is all about 'commitment' and not about actual results.
[8:59:54 AM] Claudia Freed: HOw do I know this? Molly Whitehouse (rising star in green bonds) is getting married to my nephew. God help her. The family is MAKING her convert to Judaism. If I could tell her to think VERY CRITICALLY about that decision, I would. It didn't work so well for me.
[9:01:11 AM] Claudia Freed: Mariner has a list of 6 principles and a couple of them deal with measuring impact. It may be all talk, I can't tell.
[9:01:16 AM] Peter Burgess: Now that's another dimension of VALUE ... religion is VERY comforting under a whole lot of situations .. and a huge mess in others!
[9:02:28 AM] Claudia Freed: Exactly. And if your future family's track record in 'religious inclusiveness' is a big failure, then I would proceed with caution. Talk about RISK!
[9:04:59 AM] Peter Burgess: I think the 6 Principles are the PRI principles. When I cahllenged the CEO of PRI (who is from Australia / New Zealand and lives in London) about the reality that there was no measurement she pointed out that she (PRI) wanted to move the needle and the start of this was to get organizations to commit to the principles ... measurement would have been a step too far ... for the moment. IF THERE WAS A PRACTICAL WAY OF DOING IT THAT WAS LOW COST THEY WOULD DO IT!
[9:06:16 AM] Claudia Freed: As I said...is there ANYBODY (besides TVA, of course!) thinking of measuring waht matters?
[9:11:39 AM] Peter Burgess: OUCH ... I cannnot find the name of the PRI CEO at the moment quickly ... she was in New York about 3 months ago. UNPRI was inititially an activity of the UN ... then it spun off ... and now has several trillion dollars of invetment capital committed ... but no measure!
[9:13:29 AM] Peter Burgess: Andrew Winston wrote a book The Big Pivot a couple of years back where he interviewed many CEOs all of whom talked about the importance of social and environmental impact. I have asked him if he interviewed CFOs and he said NO.
[9:14:23 AM] Claudia Freed: Of course. Chief Impact Officer should become a new title.
[9:18:01 AM] Peter Burgess: More recently the ACAUS (Association of Chartered Accountants in the USA) New York group hosted the President of the UK Institute of Chartered Accountants (England and Wales more accurately, not UK) at a reception and I had the chance to talk to him about what needed to be done to get accountants on board with impact accounting. He is open to something innovative that actually works. And all of the various national bodies for Chartered Accountancy have sustainability experts who are trying to figure out something but so far aren't getting there ... they were also hosted in New York by ACAUS in a separate event earlier in the year.
[9:18:43 AM] Claudia Freed: That's a start.
[9:20:17 AM] Peter Burgess: Each of the big accounting firms ... PwC, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG are working like crazy on this ... but not for general public use but to give each of them a business advantage. They are a huge constraint on getting something useful done quickly!
[9:21:30 AM] Peter Burgess: The same goes for the investment houses / investment advisorts. They want to be able to promote their specialty without actually enabling a generally accepted methodology to be used by everyone.
[9:21:58 AM] Peter Burgess: I wish I was 17 not 77!
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