Carl Setzer

Was just reading a lending market update which included a note about the puzzling behavior of the stock market last week. Faced with a number of positive economic indicators, the market sold off pretty heavily. Well, with my time at Fortune 500s, I’ve seen this before. I learned a long-time ago that Wall Street, the stock-markets and prices of such things is driven, on a day-to-day basis primarily by emotion. This also feeds into the quarter by quarter mentality of most stock valuation. Time and time again, in most markets, it’s those with long-term views and understanding that do well. This is true in real estate as well. If you can shift your view out 5, 10, 20 years in the future, you can escape the variability of these emotionally based fluctuations.

Consider: discontent with self-image feeds huge profits to the billion dollar beauty-industrial-complex, and significant misery to millions. We in the business world talk at great lengths about value-add. The only way I see "value-add" by this sector requires a very short-term focus. I wonder if there's a place for the beauty businesses in a world of high-functioning people with great self-esteem. So I think of many women who use these products without demonstrating any lack of self-confidence. Are they simply hiding a deeper misery, or might there be something deeper that I simply cannot see. Probably the later. Probably. We should consider who we can extract the more egregious agony from this sector while keeping the (presumed?) benefits. So much to meditate upon.

Sustainability has been a significant part of my journey for years. Perhaps the most obvious element was my time at Starbucks working in environmental affairs , but that's really only a piece. Also, my time with the Episcopal Church, where I interacted closely with the Earth Ministry greatly expanding my learning. Just two of the more significant parts of my life. I've been exploring this idea for decades. My goal is greater than just understanding sustainability, but finding ways to live it. Really, defining it is the easy part. It's living it that's tough. I'm paraphrasing my friends Brian and Mary Natrass with this definition: a sustainable society is one that takes no more then it returns to the ecosystem. Balance. And though the term "sustainble" gets thrown about a great deal nowadays, I'm not aware of any element or system in modern society that meets that description. Our consumer economy is, actually, the exact opposite. Continued exploitat...

I'm puzzled. Why is Sony deferring to the PDRK?  There's nothing dramatically new about this latest round of adolescent posturing. Of course, the North Koreans haven't taken responsibility. But, why? Is it the threats of violence, which seem rather unexecutable at this point. Perhaps it's simple economics, with a significant lack of theatres willing to show it? Perhaps the other production companies lobbied hard enough, worried about getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak. Perhaps it's the hacking. Looks like Sony had been hit hard. But, is it really so bad that they'll dump the whole $44 million movie production investment? It's looking that way. Of course, most of the coverage I've read has been focused on the hacking. When a global company is reduced to handwritten paper memos, the threat must be considered severe. I'm disappointed that these self-styled Guardians of Peace won this round. Should give us all pause, though. This is a distur...

Celebrity had been, and it's really now, about many loving the beloved from afar. The new online economy, this new world, is about making the connection more intimate, more personal. Even with large audiences, the connections are one to one, or feel so.

We don't see that what we pay directly influences how well others live. By driving to pay less, always less, we drive down the quality of life for others; this lust for advantage. Now I understand that we expect that the lowered costs come from the horded wealth of the exploiters. Yet, really, that cost is born by the most vulnerable. Where is the sweet spot: customer maximizes their lives, seller theirs? It's truly impossible to know without transparency. Which won't be fully realized without trust. Finding this place of trust, where we can believe, fully, that each party is seeking "win-win", this is the great challenge for humanity. To move past seeking advantage, from exploitation to relationship and respect. To seek out a world where we all grow, all benefit and no one is crushed by inequality. This is my dream, at least.

I am excited by this project: Mayday , creating a crowdsourced SuperPac to end all SuperPacs (SuperDuperPac?). I've long admired Larry's work , and also have been concerned by cash's influence in politics. For me, this has the potential to be a profound pivotal moment of the internet age and social media driven democracy. This coming Monday (June 16) at 8:00 pm EASTERN time, Mr. Lessig and Amanda Palmer will be hosting a video conversation that I expect will be very much worth your time. If I can at all make this work with my calendar, I will be online for this. Update: Here's some recommended "pre-reading":  1) http:// thebea.st/UhhBVV   2) http:// bit.ly/MD-TNR   3) http:// bit.ly/MD-Medium  

I groaned when I saw this come through my Twitter feed: Jumping straight to the Nazi/Hitler comparison's really streamlines the descent to trollish online discussion. No need to wade through all that high-falutin, intellectual discussion; jump straight to the trash talk! Weak rhetorical technique, I'm afraid. I won't bother with deconstructing the analogy Mr. Perkins presents, Tim Fernholz did a good job at that on Quartz . I do, however, want to explore the main point: the growing discontent at our income disparity. Mr. Perkins statement brings to mind a misconception that's paralyzing the income inequality debate. "You're just jealous of our success", generally rattled off defensively. Now I've grown weary of this. It's simply knee-jerk defensive justification that serves no purpose. Simply, it's folks' like Mr. Perkins way to avoid dealing with the larger issue. And, of course, the role they play both in the causality of the situati...

Can capitalism respond to our various global crisises?  Can it respond to global warming, income gaps, etc? Or is it's very nature corrosive? By us all being competitors, does that destroy out ability to collaborate? Or are we able to find that third way, a path where we're all equal, not undercutting and seeking for everyone to benefit? Is there a way for win-win to be globalized, scaled across cultures, countries, et al? 

I've been thinking about money lately. Not just the considerations one would expect from the unemployed, but at a larger economic perspective. A couple of things brought this about. One, our school district added a charge for electronic additions to school lunch accounts. That prompted me to research the costs of electronic payments. This was expanded upon by chatting with the folks at Fabric of Life , a local store focusing on Fair Trade products. As they encouraged me to pay with cash or check (sadly, neither of which I had), we got into a discussion of the effects of these myriad charges on small businesses. First, there's a payment they make simply to be part of the network, providing access to the payment system. On top of that, we have a per transaction charge. Then there's a percentage charge of the transaction. I'm left wondering what value these systems add. Well, besides convenience. For me, convenience is the main benefit. I don't need to go to an ATM...

Just watched a spot for a prescription eye-lash grower. Watching it makes me think of the treatments for gas, hair-loss, and all sorts of trivial ailments. Seems rather superfluous and silly. Clearly, even such a noble endeavor as medicine looses its ethical compass in the face of profit. How do we get treatments developed for serious diseases that don’t have large markets? The invisible hand won’t bring them about. A disease, no matter how dreadful its affects and the suffering it causes, that only has a minute number of “customers” won’t attract the medical industrial complex. Is there any way to build these treatments, products? To alleviate these diseases and mitigate suffering? This ethical concern is one, unspoken, draw for me towards a nationalized (perhaps globalized?) system. I hope that we could find a non-socialized system.

An impressive graphic from Fixr . I like the design: clear, clean, quick and focuses on one point like a laser. Click the image to enlarge Source: Fixr

I felt a compelling need to respond to John Kay ’s piece, “ Green lobby must be treated as a religion ”, from the Financial Times earlier this week. (To be clear, I’m simply responding to the most salient portions.) Environmentalism embraces a myth of the Fall: the loss of harmony between man and nature caused by our materialistic society. Al Gore recounted the words of Chief Seattle, as his tribe relinquished their ancient lands: "Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother?" Perhaps one component of the environmental community does. “Environmentalism” captures a wide group of people. Environmentalists include animal rights types, members of many faith traditions (Christian, Buddhist, etc), as well as a core group of SCIENTISTS, who are the ones who have done most of the heavy lifting until recently. Many within the environmental movement (most by my experience) are actually scientists who would find Kay’s allusion si...