----- Forwarded Message ----- From: John Fullerton <[email protected]> To: Robert Searle <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, 2 July 2012, 23:30 Subject: Will Barclays' CEO Surprise Us? To forward this email, click here. Will Barclays' CEO Surprise Us? Like Lloyd Blankfein with the Abacus fiasco, and Jamie Dimon with “the whale trade,” Barclays CEO Bob Diamond has an unparalleled opportunity to surprise us this week during his appearance before Parliament to explain the most recent financial scandal involving the systematic manipulation of LIBOR, the benchmark interbank lending rate upon which hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial transactions are priced, over several years. Will Diamond seize the opportunity missed by both Blankfein and Dimon to emerge as the first true financial statesman of the modern global banking crisis? In his column this week, “Taking One for the Country,” Tom Friedman describes how Chief Justice Roberts “surprised us” with the Supreme Court Decision on health care reform by doing the unexpected in our current culture of toxic partisanship and offering an example of true leadership that actually puts the country’s interests ahead of politics. We need a banking leader to do the same right now, to put the vital interests of the world economy above the parochial interests of bankers and their toxic entitlement culture. Unfortunately, Diamond’s recent letter to Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee Andrew Tyrie suggests there will be no such surprise. Read more at the Future of Finance. What Will 2052 Look Like? The Limits to Growth co-author Jorgen Randers recently released 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next 40 Years that attempts to project global economic and ecological trends for the next forty years based on similar thinking to that which underpinned the controversial Club of Rome report. Capital Institute agrees with the scale of the challenge Randers presents. However, we take a different tack when looking at the global political challenge: instead of assuming failure, we believe it is our responsibility to find solutions and advocate for their acceptance. A part of this process is our report Economics, Finance, Governance, and Ethics for the Anthropocene now available for comment. For more on our report, visit CapitalInstitute.org. Summer Visits to the Capital Institute Archives This summer we are inviting the Capital Institute community to take a fresh look at some of our earliest postings profiling exemplary institutions working to encourage and support a more holistic approach to investing and financing. This week we highlight our June 2010 profile of TIAA-CREF’s Global Social and Community Investment Group. The Group was created in 2006 after a survey TIAA-CREF conducted indicated that the core values that guided its clients investment decision-making were human rights, community investment, and environmental sustainability. Since we posted our conversation with then Director Cherie Santos-Wuest, Amy Muska O’Brien has assumed the role of managing director. Santos-Wuest is now Principal Investment Officer for Real Estate for the Connecticut Retirement, Pension and Trust Funds. Read more at the Capital Institute Investment Features page. What We're Reading Questioning neoclassical economics has recently become acceptable for a limited few reporters and opinion-makers in major publications, but the American financial media has (for the most part) missed this trend. Paul Ferrel broke business media’s silence in the June 12th Wall Street Journal. Myth of Perpetual Growth is killing America by Paul Ferrel Comment of the Week “We need a Carbon Tax, not Cap and Trade, and no doubt we need an FTT, not lawyered-up Dodd Frank. Is there a pathway to either becoming viable in time to prevent the carbon and credit bombs from detonating? Not a rhetorical question.” - Walter Borden, Global Financial Crisis: How Many Wake-Up Calls Do We Need? Quote of the Week “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” - Mahatma Ghandi To unsubscribe from this email list, click here. 73 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Greenwich, CT 06830 United States