A Financial Accountability Experiment

IN light of the recent global economic meltdown, I would like to propose a few new arrangements for corporate agents and the communities which they are a part. I realize that not all corporations played a negative part in the process of devastating our apparent fragile market, but every business (large and small) can only benefit from local attention. These mechanisms must serve to prevent the devastations we have seen since the financial crisis in the future, and promote a more stable and prosperous market for future generations.

1. Citizen's social commission: A report accounting for the social impacts of corporate community members. Through a devised community impact calculus, citizen groups can determine the responsibility and influences corporations have to communities.

2. Citizen's social audit: A committee of citizen's dedicated to overseeing the operations of Randomly selected businesses in the area. This mechanism will serve to ensure positive social and legal practices on the part of businesses. Serving to spread accountability, businesses will be held to certain parameters or face popular criticism and boycotts.

3. Community Capital: A measure to determine social, political, and economic assets held by the community. Through such an appraisal, the community can better offer benefits to members thereby attracting consistent membership and power; determining which members have resources (not only monetary), coordinators can piece together all sorts of teams within the community tasked with achieving some aim. For instance, recognizing that one community member is the media correspondent for a local media outlet and another member is a communications Teaching Assistant at a local college, coordinators can arrange for an informal dialogue around the intersection of media theory and practice and it's affects on community. [Such arrangements can take innumerable forms.]

These proposed arrangements would serve to promote social responsibility and local investment in local-economies. Without diverting too much of the attention of business managers from their work, each citizen can make certain they are familiar with the intentions and implements of their local businesses. In fact, the implementation of this philosophy of democratic participation should not only fall on the citizens but directly should be the task of the Federal Reserve as part of their work is to regulate the financial industry. Much as Dean Baker wrote in the Guardian recently, "The Fed has a large arsenal with which to attack a housing bubble, but the first weapon is simply talk. If Greenspan and Bernanke had used their platform at the Fed to educate Congress, the financial industry, and the public at large about the existence of the housing bubble and the risks it posed, this likely would have been sufficient to pop it." I am suggesting a thorough education of the public in the face of a failure of leadership.

Outfitted with easy-to-use accounting tools, such as social responsibility templates, these groups of citizens will be capable of changing the process of market growth and stability forever.

Furthermore, as I am proposing so much additional work for citizens, let's not forget about those originally tasked with protecting the common good: government. I believe city governments should be tasked with logging popular stories of how this financial crisis affected their populations. It should be made clear through whatever means the city can muster that we will never forget the mistakes of wall street and the "regulators" who were supposed to protect us against these forces of greed and neglect.

PS.
Now, what I have not yet addressed is an aspect of politics that monied interests heavily rely upon to have their agenda pursued by policymakers and that is access. THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE ACCESS. Without an avenue to communicate and lobby for our interests, our interests will always be ignored in favor for the interests of those with access.