Hazel Henderson, coauthor of the Cosimo book The Power of Yin and a longtime advocate for global financial reform, has some advice for the world leaders who will join President George W. Bush in Washington D.C. on November 15 in a summit to discuss economic issues. Among her suggestions:

Imposing globally-harmonized currency exchange taxes is an obvious step.  Promoted for decades by economists from James Tobin, Bank of Sweden’s Nobel Memorial prizewinner, to former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, this below 1% tax on the $2 trillion daily currency trading would reduce some of its 90% speculative activity.  Recent levels of turbulence in currency markets are not sustainable, and Bernanke’s ideas about selling US dollars to buy other currencies are unprecedented.  Only global regulation of currency markets can address the problem of weaker currencies leading countries to default.

…

Reform of ill-designed monetary systems based on debt (see www.ethicalmarkets.tv “Money as Debt” and the American Monetary Reform Act of 2008 at www.monetary.org); in the UK, monetary reforms proposed by banking expert James Robertson at www.jamesrobertson.com and those of the New Economics Foundation at www.neweconomics.org).  This includes raising capital reserve requirements for banks and reducing leverage used by all financial players.

Read the whole article at Henderson’s site Ethical Markets. (See also Henderson’s recent article “And We All Thought That Banks Had Money!”.)

The Power of Yin is avaiable from Amazon and other online booksellers.

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The U.S. stock market is wrapping up its worst week ever. More than 12 million American homeowners are now underwater, stuck with mortgages worth more than their homes. And the pain is global: The credit freeze is causing cargo to pile up at shipping ports around the planet as banks refuse to accept letters of credit guaranteeing payment. The nation of Iceland is bankrupt.

Investigative journalist and “News Dissector” Danny Schechter has been on top of the impending — and now arrived — economic crisis, as demonstrated by his new book, Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, recently published by Cosimo. In the book, he explains the origins of the crisis and lays the blame at the feet of those who knowingly engineered it.

And the word is spreading. The Economist mentions Plunder alongside other books such as The Subprime Solution by Yale professor Robert Schiller, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by leading investment expert Charles Ellis, and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, in a piece called “Read it and Weep: The Banking Bust and The Book Bubble.”

Schechter has been making numerous appearances in the media to talk about Plunder, the financial crisis now playing out, and the possible solutions:

• NPR’s program On Point (listen to the program here)

• Laura Flanders’ GritTV, on which Schechter and others put the current financial crisis in its historical context:

• The Real News:

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Danny Schechter, author of the new Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, will be appearing at McNally Jackson Booksellers in New York City tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7, from 7pm to 8pm, as part of the store’s First Tuesday series:

This monthly series curated by author and activist Mark Crispin Miller features authors whose books tackle political and public issues from a stance outside the mainstream. Plunder follows up on Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Danny Schechter’s 2007 film In Debt We Trust, exposing the role Wall Street played in promoting deceptive and dodgy subprime lending. This evening’s event is guest hosted by Steve Fraser.

McNally Jackson Booksellers is located at 52 Prince Street (between Lafayette & Mulberry Streets) in Manhattan’s Little Italy. For more info, visit the shop’s Web site or call (212) 274-1160.

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers

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Hazel Henderson, coauthor of the Cosimo book The Power of Yin, has won a 2007 Nautilus Silver Book Award for her book Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.

The Nautilus Book Awards were conceived to recognize and reward a group of world-changing books, and to celebrate how they contribute to positive social change, spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, and responsible leadership a prestigious book awards with silver and gold winners.

Cosimo congratulates Henderson on her award.

The Power of Yin is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

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Praise for Danny Schechter’s book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, new from Cosimo, is pouring from advocates, activists, economists, and political analysts.

John Taylor, President & CEO, National Coalition on Community investment (NCRC), the nation’s leading housing group fighting foreclosures:

Plunder, like Schechter’s [film] IN DEBT WE TRUST, speaks truth to power about the infectious greed and malfeasance of the financial services sector that hoodwinked our nation and pushed millions of American families into foreclosure and catastrophe.

Professor Robert Manning, author of Credit Card Nation and consumer credit expert:

(Schechter) deserves our appreciation for identifying yet another crucially important issue that has been blissfully ignored by the mainstream media and our national leaders – the consumer debt time bomb.

Max Fraad Wolff, economist:

Schechter has done in Plunder what countless media outlets have done and watchdogs agencies have failed to do. His work offers an exciting guide to how “it” broke, where “it” broke and why.

And this review is just in from Stephen Lendman at Global Research.ca:

Schechter’s book is timely, important, and frightening. He does a masterful job deconstructing a complicated subject. One covered up in the mainstream. Its dark side papered over suppressed.

Schechter explains it fully and clearly for lay readers to understand. It’s essential they do it because it touches everyone. No one knows how bad it may get, but the current crisis has legs. The worst of it may be ahead, and before it ends millions may feel it painfully. “Plunder” provides ammunition. A blueprint of what’s unfolding. Explaining that government help won’t be forthcoming, so we’re responsible for making the best of a very bad situation.

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Danny Schechter, author of the new Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, joined Jesse Jackson on Wall Street to highlight the subprime crisis:

See here for pictures from the event.

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Danny Schechter, author of the new Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, has checked in on the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. And it ain’t pretty.

At NewsDissector, Schechter writes:

Is this what a State of Emergency feels like?

Make no mistake about: we have entered the era of a financial coup d’etat with the Treasury Department releasing a THREE PAGE document and then demanding $700 Billion dollars for a system “rescue” as a start and with unlimited and unchecked power. Welcome to another 9/11 with the Bush Administration in effect pre-empting the options of whoever becomes our next President with a measure likely to cost way over a $ trillion or more….

For months, we have been expecting an October Surprise, perhaps an attack on Iran. Instead what we are getting is a September surprise, and an attack on American taxpayers who are being told they/we will now bail out criminally irresponsible bankers, the folks that Franklin Delano Roosevelt once denounced as “BANKSTERS.”

The only thing missing are troops in the streets and, believe me, as I reported last week, that is coming. Troops are being shipped back from Iraq to be on standby for CIVIL UNREST. (The “authorities” don’t believe that the American people will take the strip mining of their lives without a fight. Surely more crime, and other dislocation is coming!)

More at Global Research.ca, where Schechter explains why “The Bush Administration’s Rescue Plan Will Not Work.”

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Cosimo author Loren Coleman will speak at Scarefest in Lexington, Kentucky, on Friday and Saturday, September 12th and 13th — tickets are available at the door — and at Mass Monster Mash in Boston on Saturday, October 18th; tickets are selling out fast and seating is limited.

The Book of Werewolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, is the latest volume in Cosimo’s Loren Coleman Presents series of classic cryptozoology books. This 1865 work, published here in a beautiful replica edition complete with the original illustrations, was the first serious academic study of the shape-shifters of mythological lore. Says Coleman in his new introduction:

This work is the most frequently cited early study of lycanthropy and is regarded by most scholars as the foundation work in the field. The Book of Werewolves was so visionary that it foresaw that future discussions within werewolf studies would necessarily travel down many side paths. Indeed, midway through The Book of Werewolves, Baring-Gould treks into the shadowy world of crimes vaguely connected to werewolves, including serial murders, grave desecration, and cannibalism.

The Book of Werewolves is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

UPDATE: Coleman will also appear at the Museum of Science in Boston on Wednesday, October 29, at 7pm to deliver a talk entitled “Bigfoot, Sea Serpents, and Cryptozoology.” The program is free and seating begins at 5:45 for this limited but open-to-the public event. Coleman will be signing books afterwards.

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Barbara Marx Hubbard, one of the authors of Cosimo publication The Power of Yin, will speak in the Big Tent at the Democratic National Convention in Denver today, Thursday, August 28th, at 4PM Mountain Time. To watch the video live, go to The Big Tent and click “Watch Live Feed” on the left sidebar.

Marx Hubbard — whose name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency at the 1984 Democratic National Convention — will present the CITIZENS SOLUTIONS COUNCIL, proposing that the next president of the United States establish a National Solutions Council to identify, connect, and communicate what is working in America, which is similar to the concept of the “Peace Room” that she proposed in 1984.

To read the initiative and to sign the petition please go to Citizens Solutions Council. Find out more about Marx Hubbard’s Foundation for Conscious Evolution at her Web site, BarbaraMarxHubbard.com.

The Power of Yin is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman — author of Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America, from Cosimo partner Paraview, and presenter of Cosimo’s new series of classic cryptozoology books — has offered some comments on this week’s news about the hikers in Georgia who claim to have found the body of a Bigfoot-type creature.

From ABCnews.com:

Loren Coleman, a prolific writer on the Sasquatch, Yeti and other mysterious creatures, said he thinks this is going to be one of the biggest Bigfoot stories of the decade, even it turns out to be hoax.

When it comes to the alleged creature, he says he doesn’t use the word “believe.”

“I accept or deny evidence. Based upon the evidence we have [about Bigfoot], 80 percent is proof and 20 percent is myth,” he said.

With this one body found in Georgia, however, it’s “99 percent a hoax and 1 percent a probability of reality,” he said.

But he’s still excited about the alleged discovery.

“I’ll never turn down a chance to look at a body because it could be real, and we can’t choose the accident of history. & The most undesirable people might be the ones to discover it, but who am I to judge them.”

(Looks like Coleman’s already being proven right about a hoax.)

Buy Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America at Amazon, or explore the new series Loren Coleman Presents: The Book of Werewolves, The Great Sea Serpent, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, and The Romance of Natural History.

(Technorati tags: Loren Coleman, Georgia Bigfoot, cryptozoology)

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