Society and Economy
A broad analysis

A broad analysis of many of the indicators that are used to assess socio-economic performance ... all financial

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The following observation was made after looking at an interesting set of economic and financial information which can be found at:
http://www.businessinsider.com/naufal-sanaullah-market-overview-2011-11#-53

Overview ... yes. Brilliant ... no. I enjoyed the collection of information and the associated interpretation, but at the end of the collection I was better informed and not much helped regarding the implications of the information,

My position is ... I think ... supported by this information. The capitalist market economy has reached a situation where everything has become 'circular' and there is no way out using the conventional tools and mindset of the economic and financial quants.

We have demonstrated in the past three years that there is an unlimited capacity to increase the amount of dollar money by expanding the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve ... I am not sure where the money actually comes from but we will ignore that question now.

The capital market business model is to allocate resources where there is profit to be made ... but the easy profit from selling goods and services that we really do not need is now being seen as something of a fraud. The house or car we cannot afford, the entertainment on a credit card and so on. GDP is not going to grow because people just do not need to consume as much. As profits weaken the stock prices will weaken.

But what about needs? There are trillions of dollars of needs that are not been addressed by meaningful economic activity. Improved health, education, public safety, infrastructure and critical research are all needed, but the structure to do this does not exist. More important the metrics for this are also missing. Economic activity in all these areas has costs which must be funded, and they should produce what I refer to as valueadd ... something like profit, but related to the improvement in the balance sheet of a community's quality of life rather than the balance sheet of a business entity.

Many not for profit activities use amount of money used as a proxy for performance. This is an invitation to be big and sloppy ... when the opportunity should be to be small and valuable.

Much of the data available originate from the organizations carrying out the activities ... with little or no data from the communities where people live and organizations operate.

Most big organizations know what they are doing within their organization ... maybe this is not so for the big banks ... but they have zero knowledge about what the impact of their activities are on the communities where they operate ... nor in many cases could they care less. All the extractive industries have a lot of explaining to do about the damage they have caused to the places where they operate.

When we aim to use economic activity to satisfy needs, the capitalist market economy can grow into a value market economy, and in turn there can be maintenance and improvement in quality of life.