Join us for our holiday party on Tuesday December 15th.
Matthew Bishop, The Economist’s New York Bureau Chief, and co-author of the highly acclaimed book Philanthrocapitalism (which is just out in paperback) will talk with Lauren Bush, of FEED Projects and Charles Best, of DonorsChoose. The conversation will spark ideas on innovative ways to give this season. And the cocktail party will be, as always, a great way to meet new people.
On the subject of giving, we have a host of gifts for you:
- Matthew is generously giving his book to the first fifty people who sign up for this party;
- Donorschoose is offering all guests a $50 online gift-cards to donate to a classroom of their choice;
- We’re giving away FREE tickets to this salon to our members. Non-members pay a reduced $25. RSVP here.
You can also stay for dinner at Norwood’s new Club Room on the second floor.
For those of you who haven’t yet heard, we launched the JANERA Membership and have designed three different levels to suit your individual needs. Click on our Membership Page and find out which level fits you best. Sign up now, and secure your free admission for this party.
The membership officially starts in January 2010, but if you become a member before December 14th, we’ll also give you a 10% discount on the annual fee. Note that those of you who sign up now will be considered founding members and will stay at this annual rate for life.
Buy your discounted membership today!
We look forward to seeing you on 15th and happy holidays!
In the midst, or perhaps just the beginning, of what is being described by members of congress as an “economic hurricane”, a large group of self-described ‘global nomads’ made their way to the shelter of low lighting and good drinks in New York’s Norwood Club on Tuesday night. The purpose of the gathering, organized jointly by JANERA.com and Tablet Hotels, was not to forget our problems but to stare them straight in the face. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute and venerable economist would sit down with Matthew Bishop, the Economist’s New York bureau chief and lead a public discussion about where we are going and what lies ahead.
As guests mingled around the bar, where the economic hurricane had not yet hit drink prices and a large beverage known as Old Pal was going for 28 dollars, the evening’s speakers arrived and immediately began fielding questions. “How long do you think this economic climate will last?” one guest asked Sachs. “What worries you most about what lies ahead?” another leaned in to ask.
“These are all things I hope we’ll get into this evening,” Sachs responded, and then glanced around anxiously. “Where are we?” he suddenly asked. A few patrons looked at each other. Was it possible the great development aid thinker was having a delicate moment? “Uh, New York?” one guest ventured. “Oh, no, I mean this venue,” Sachs continued. “What is this place?”
Relief spread across the faces of his gathered audience. “Oh, this is the Norwood Club,” one guest responded. “It’s a private club in New York.” Sachs nodded his head and glanced toward the bar at the center of the living room in what is a converted townhouse. “I see. Well, this sounded like fun so I thought I’d come try it. I don’t do that many of these engagements.” Then he moved up to the front of the room, a sheaf of documents in his hands, and took his seat alongside Bishop.
Following a quick introduction by Janera Soerel, founder of JANERA.com, the two speakers launched into their opening remarks, seeking to underscore just how large the global economic collapse was and would continue to be. “This is an extraordinarily big moment,” started Bishop. “No one can believe what’s happened. It’s a paradigm shift moment. We’re going to look back on 2008 as the year everything changed.”
Sachs followed Bishop’s head-shaking comments with more specifics. “Huge imbalances in the world economy, coupled with ecological stresses on the planet and our own ongoing effort to not blow ourselves up in all-out war are the largest issues we face on the planet.” Sachs, raising his hands in the air, voiced his support for Obama and his new administration but warned he “could get stuck” and stated his concern that the world’s poor were not sufficiently “on the radar.”
From 2003 to 2008, worldwide stock market values increased by thirty trillion dollars, with a ten trillion dollar increase in the US alone. But this unprecedented market growth has been met in the past six months with unprecedented decline, where thirty trillion dollars have been lost, ten trillion of those in the housing market.
“These facts alone would cause us all to feel a little shitty,” Sachs joked.
While the two speakers differed over the role governments can play in redressing the situation, with Bishop urging a stronger private sector role against Sach’s call for more responsibility and control, at least in the short term, from the government, both seemed to agree that the situation would get a lot worse before it got better.
“Consumption is going to be low and subdued for many years to come,” Bishop surmised, while Sachs pointed out that trillions of dollars in government spending and bailout money could be allocated in poverty alleviation initiatives and programs for social change. “In all the presidential and vice presidential debates, the words ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ were not used once. The words ‘middle class’ were used,” Sachs said. “This is a shocking sign that our politics has stopped being about real people.” As they sat at the front of the room, beginning to take questions from the audience, both men seemed floored by the scope and scale of what they were discussing.
“I’m not sure I have a deep theory of how things got so awry,” Sachs conceded. Yet, as the night continued, audience members pushed the two for a deeper theory and the focus of discussion bounced from a better way to measure social wellbeing (“we need a more sophisticated measure”) to philanthropy (“Rockefeller was the greatest philanthropist in history, perhaps Bill Gates can match him,”) to what we should do about the automobile industry, (“the move to create hybrid and electric cars is exactly the direction we need to be going in.”)
The consensus that the conditions the world is now facing are “extremely difficult” and will “likely get more, not less, complicated” were not in dispute, but clear and specific steps forward were in short supply.
“I cycled through a range of emotions in listening to this discussion tonight,” commented Michela O’Connor Abrams, publisher of the design and home furnishing magazine Dwell who had come to hear the two speak. “I went from being depressed to angry to hopeful to depressed again.”
As Matthew Bishop chatted with guests eager to compare notes about their own survival strategies, a documentary filmmaker approached the departing Jeffery Sachs. “I’d like to come up to Columbia and meet with you about some ideas and ask you a few more questions,” the filmmaker said. Sachs, still clutching his sheaf of papers, laughed.
“Sure we can talk more,” he said. “I don’t know that I have all the answers, but we can certainly talk about the questions.”
Join us for our holiday party on Tuesday December 15th.
