Venice hosts Solari founder, Catherine Austin Fitts
By Tom
O’Meara
The Grass Roots Venice
Neighborhood Council’s Town Hall, December 13, featured Catherine Austin
Fitts, a nationally known investment banker and a pioneer in applying modern
financial wizardry to empower neighborhoods and support local business.
She spoke for an hour and a half at the
Venice United Methodist Church Peace and Justice Center, answering many
questions from interested Venice
residents.
She introduced the audience to her
concept of a Solari, a community-run organization that utilizes the methods of
today's savviest investors to economically grow neighborhoods like Venice that
are rich with both diverse local business and cultural creativity, but without
compromising either.
Under conventional
Wal-Mart type models for growth, neighborhoods stay unorganized and unaware that
cooperation enables them to utilize the same economic leverage that is being
wielded by those outside the community, allowing resources (or character) to
flow out.
A Solari starts out as an
investment club where civic-minded Venetians get together to find local
profit-making opportunities. But the club would eventually expand into a
corporation whose controlling stock would be offered only to all Venice
residents. Its prime mission is simply to align the neighborhood money and
people.
For example, housing built
using Venice Solari funds could give occupancy priority to Venice residents.
Also, local business would have access to Solari mechanized stock-market-type
profit multipliers, eliminating the advantage of cookie-cutter chain stores and
preventing them from getting a foothold in
Venice.
More information at:
www.solari.com
Posted: Sat
- January 1, 2005 at 03:55 PM