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Help us catalogue the social businesses of e-agriculture - clean water , food, energy - that 10000 rural telecentres will want to search and question first as the West Coast internet partners of Grameen Solutions empower internt use to the poorest 3 billion of the world who have so far been excluded from almost all virtual world media as well as global markets. worth wathing - quadir's next : emergence bioenergy
1 2 agri-webs worth viewing rsvp info@worldcitizen.tv

What factors multiplied the global food shortage of 008?
These suggestions came from April article The New Economics of Hunger in Washington Post - please mail info@worldcitizen.tv with others

A brutal convergence of events has hit an unprepared global market, and grain prices are sky high. The world's poor suffer most.

By Anthony Faiola, April 27

wheat prices spiked amid mediocre 007 harvests in the United States and Europe

and signs of prolonged drought in Australia.
 
.

As prices rose, major grain producers including Argentina and Ukraine, battling inflation caused in part by soaring oil bills, were moving to bar exports on a range of crops to control costs at home.

It meant less supply on world markets even as global demand entered a fundamentally new phase.

Already, corn prices had been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs.

Soybeans were facing pressure from surging demand in China. But as supplies in the pipelines of global trade shrank, prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof.


At the same time, food was becoming the new gold. Investors fleeing Wall Street's mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more.
 
By Christmas, a global panic was building. With fewer places to turn, and tempted by the weaker dollar, nations staged a run on the American wheat harvest.


Foreign buyers, who typically seek to purchase one or two months' supply of wheat at a time, suddenly began to stockpile. They put in orders on U.S. grain exchanges two to three times larger than normal as food riots began to erupt worldwide.
 
This led major domestic U.S. mills to jump into the fray with their own massive orders, fearing that there would soon be no wheat left at any price.


"Japan, the Philippines, [South] Korea, Taiwan -- they all came in with huge orders, and no matter how high prices go, they keep on buying," said Jeff Voge, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Trade

"We have never seen anything like this before," Voge said. "Prices are going up more in one day than they have during entire years in the past.

Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men -- distributors, processors, even governments -- but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for political survival after a March rebuke from voters furious over food prices. In Bangladesh, more than 20,000 factory workers protesting food prices rampaged through the streets two weeks ago, injuring at least 50 people.

To quell unrest, countries including Indonesia are digging deep to boost food subsidies. The U.N. World Food Program has warned of an alarming surge in hunger in areas as far-flung as North Korea and West Africa. The crisis, it fears, will plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty, forced to spend more and more of their income on skyrocketing food bills.


"This crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.



For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara's edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread. Instead, she has downgraded to cheaper foods, such as sorghum, a dark grain widely consumed by the world's poorest people. But sorghum has jumped 20 percent in the past 12 months. Living on the 50 cents a day she earns weaving textiles to support a family of three, her answer has been to cut out breakfast, drink tea for lunch and ration a small serving of soupy sorghum meal for family dinners. "I don't know how long we can survive like this," she said.

Countries that have driven food demand in recent years are now grappling with the cost of their own success -- rising prices. Although China has tried to calm its people by announcing reserve grain holdings of 30 to 40 percent of annual production,a number that had been a state secret, anxiety is still running high.

In India, the government recently scrapped all import duties on cooking oils and banned exports of non-basmati rice.

Ill-Equipped Markets

The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by an unprecedented linkage of the food chain.


A big reason for higher wheat prices, for instance, is the multiyear drought in Australia, something that scientists say may become persistent because of global warming. But wheat prices are also rising because U.S. farmers have been planting less of it, or moving wheat to less fertile ground. That is partly because they are planting more corn to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy.

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants.

, many economists now say food prices should have climbed much higher much earlier.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world seemed to shrink with rapidly opening markets, surging trade and improved communication and transportation technology. Given new market efficiencies and the wide availability of relatively cheap food, the once-common practice of hoarding grains to protect against the kind of shortfall the world is seeing now seemed more and more archaic. Global grain reserves plunged.


Yet there was one big problem. The global food trade never became the kind of well-honed machine that has made the price of manufactured goods such as personal computers and flat-screen TVs increasingly similar worldwide. With food, significant subsidies and other barriers meant to protect farmers -- particularly in Europe, the United States and Japan -- have distorted the real price of food globally, economists say, preventing the market from normal price adjustments as global demand has climbed.

If market forces had played a larger role in food trade, some now argue, the world would have had more time to adjust to more gradually rising prices.

The European Union doles out about $41 billion a year in agriculture subsidies, with France getting the biggest share, about $8.2 billion. The 27-nation bloc also has set a target for biofuels to supply 10 percent of transportation fuel needs by 2020 to combat global warming.

CAPITALISM's Future -entrepreneur originated France circa 1800; Future Capitalism originated France & Bangladesh circa 2006

Grameen-Veolia Water: Future Capitalist & Nobel laureate Yunus unveils Bangladesh clean water deal

31 march PARIS (AFP) — Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Monday unveiled a deal between his pioneering Grameen bank and French group Veolia Environment to provide clean water to poor rural communities in Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi economist also sought support from President Nicolas Sarkozy for creating more microcredit schemes to fight poverty, particularly in Africa.

"I wanted to make him understand how effective a tool microcredit is in helping the poor people, particularly the poor women, to take control of their own lives and pull themselves out of the problems and benefit the children," Yunus told reporters after his meeting at the Elysee palace.

After meeting with Sarkozy, Yunus sat down with top business leaders at the Elysee including billionaire Vincent Bollore and announced the creation of the new joint company with Veolia Environment.

Called Grameen-Veolia Water, the company will operate several water treatment plants in Bangladeshi villages, with the goal of bringing clean water to 100,000 people.

The project represents investments worth 500,000 euros (790,000 dollars).

A first venture is planned for the end of the year in the town of Goalmari, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital Dhaka, where clean water will be provided through drinking fountains, according to a joint statement.

During his meeting with Sarkozy, Yunus reminded him of the Group of Eight commitment to expand microcredit to Africa and said lending schemes could help the international community meet the UN millennium development goals of halving world poverty by 2015.

"In many other countries, particularly in Asia, many of the development millennium goals would be achieved but Africa is way behind so we need to focus our attention to African countries so they still have time left, so they still can achieve those goals," he said.

Sarkozy told Yunus that France would continue and step up its efforts to provide access to loans to the poor and noted that more than a third of France's African aid funding was now directed toward microfinance.

Last month, one of France's top banks, Credit Agricole, launched a foundation with Grameen bank to provide guarantees for microfinance institutions in rural and farming communities.The Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation was launched with a 50-million-euro endowment.
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Please help info@worldcitizen.tv improve this open catalogue on 3 sources: 1) Grameen e-agri social businesses; 2) world leading e-agri social businesses; world citizen resources
1)

agriculture- Grameen Krishi '91

Fishpond & livestock - Morsho '94
 Grameen Energy

2)
  • Kickstart
  • Onil Stove of HelpsInternational
    3)



    • Discussion Guide:
    Water is a perfect example of how monopoly professional rule by global-down systems will destroy the world unless we get back to mapping from local depth up. If you put a map of the world up on a large wall, and put a red pin on any locality with a water crisis, you would doubtless see 10,000+pins. But their problems are not the same. Diversity evolves many hundreds of different problems. To make human rights progress, we need to play a wholeplanet game of open source snap. We need to map actionable understanding between problem and solution whilst keeping solution knowledge as open source as nature would expect from such a basic flow of hers and essential substance of life. 

    Lots of water but arsenic polluted is quite a specific bangladesh problem. The solution science is probably already known if we could bring degrees of separation down to zero on life critical information as well as recognise that just like orphan drugs , many of the world's most urgently needed solutions for sustainability already exist, its just they are ones that cannot be marketed as if there are rich city consumers to maximise quick profits from.

    arsenic filtration searches
    all-
    news
    yunus related    		Water Angels Relaunch 2008 -can you help WA to help Yunus to help you?

    About 6 years ago, several of us were moderating quite large webs or network positions in days when we thought that eg ecademy.com and knowledgeboard.com 1 were going to grow as free worldwide social knowhow spaces among hundreds of thousands of concerned people; a question what is the single most connecting information (Q&A) context the worldwide needs to interact. water caused more agreement than any other single context.

    Beyond yogurt and banking for the poor, water (news, all links) is also the biggest map Dr Yunus is currently demanding freedom of market knowhow on, and which 10000 village telecentres will soon be needing a common trust map in asking water-interfacing knowledge that spreads around the world of e-agriculture http://egrameen.com  ; presumably water is potentially quite a large compass of social actions in many communities so here are some questions to Yunus 1000 bookclub members:
    mostofa- can you find out, is there someone in Grameen who is acting as an editor (or knowledge centre) of what grameen knows about water; also could you ask the alumni circulation list of clinton global uni who met at new orlenas if any want to form a special interest group on water rick/anne/patrick/mitchell - promises have been made by photosythesis open source netwporks on conducting surveys of leading ecological institutes for what they can contribute to free university peer to peer curricula- has anything emerged on this that can help with the first water angels survey below- or maybe the info is so basic you can provide a lot of the answers;similarly a water quix survey handout could have been the simplest south bank citizens feedback mechanism rebecca, lesley, samuel- does this connect at all with kenya summit or other africa grassroots communications projects or free university meta-hubs or virtually linking in movements - eg there is at least one large facebook water-africa conference which happens soon after 12 months of announcements; does africa ++ have a special interest group on water or agriculture lilly,sabine - is there a special interest water network among the 700 who attended yunus st james tav, guilhem, robert de s -after '7 years of development" has any plex, peoplesworld or other software got a subversion that could be put up to try its potential for trust mapping water franklin - are there some contributions you can make from being at centre of The International Free Water Academy: peter ditto through being at centre of http://tr-ac-net.org  

    Question for every reader: can you join the facebook version of water angels quest http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13918057255  and tell us whether it is a colaboration quest that can be replicated to yourt other favourite social networking tool or citizen hubs/forums/student unions searches etc; does anyione want to be an officer of water angels at facebook = I'm delighted if experts have editing suggestions; this is current water angels description of duties

    Water Angels is a peoples movement that aims to freely share basic water knowledge around the world. We also map water as probably the most basic of system flows. If children and societies do not appreciate systemic and sustainability consequences of something as all connecting as water, we miss the opportunity to make better systemic local to global decisions of every kind.

    In both theoretical and practical senses , every compound risk to survival of our species - or large subpopulations like those that whose lands may be washed away by climate change – is a system’s mapping crisis. Such crises are made many times worse than they need be by not enough system literacy being distributed wherever there are people.
    First Action Challenge of Water Angels Compile a catalogue that through electronic networks can become as iteratively detailed as societies – and different educational grades from child to adult - need on the hundred of different water problems. At a detailed level of resolution, a water atlas would show millions of localities with water problems ranging from no water at all to plenty of dirty water but not enough clean water, to too much water (places that get flooded). There are also places whose water depends on what neighbours accidentally or hostilely do upstream.

    Subsequent System Maps of Water Angels Water use also needs to be modelled for such dynamic interactions as personal drinking, community keeping clean, agricultural and industrial. As a whole, these uses reveal that water can be subject to all sorts of exponential changes. For example like topical crises in basic food markets in Asia or banking liquidity around the world, if a place has any time of the year when it has only just enough water for vital needs – and then even temporarily loses 10% of supply – the economic crisis is that costs may go up hundreds of per cent and the human crisis may be greater in lives lost. The other main crisis of system literacy can be described as not detecting Future-Now shocks. Due to current personal and governmental literacies and behaviours, the world is exponentially decreasing its stocks of water. As an example, this means that in most richer parts of the globe where water is relatively abundant and so cheap, we are not preparing for a generation or half a generation away when costs of water are much more. If the world does not rapidly increase transparency and collaboration capabilities around water, then it is quite likely that water will be the root cause of even more wars than oil has been over the last half century. If children and adults cannot visualise how to wholly share true maps on a flow as network connecting locally to globally as water, the chances of developing correct biomass maps where water’s flows are interfaced with one or more other worldwide flows are next to zero. It is not an exaggeration to say that water mapping is a necessary skill for there to be any chance of resolving climate crisis in time. chris macrae us 301 881 1655 http://waterangels.blogspot.com/          		In 2003, about 200 Europeans met in Berlin, Luxembourg and London to discuss whether it was practical to form Knowledge Angel networks whose members committed to these values:
     • build on smart relationships
     • act as a living system
    • to be open, transparent, excellent
    • to think big.

    If thesee are values you are developing in open source or peer to peer action learning newtorks etc, I would always love to swap experiences, chris macrae us tel 301 881 1655, Bethesda MD near Washington DC
    Business Social.
    Action Social.

    Grameen Credit Agricole is linked with tehse webs: Farm , nourriremonde

    webs on the people's agriculture : 1

    Enter content here

    Enter supporting content here

    Biographies of 3 Revolutionary or Social Business Entrepreneurs. It is amazing how few American-speaking people know that the French word's between taking refers to mapping whether the people will be freer to be productive in the system to be put in place after guillotining royalty's over-selfish control of assets.

    Whether you believe in such capitalism punishment is pretty irrelevant since if we fail to urgently turn round lose-lose-lose Globalisation into www, one of the victims will be nature hesrelf and when she crashes there will likely be no return for our species. So it gives me a tad more than great pleasure to introduce you to 3  of the Future Capitalism investigators that I trust most around our planet.  mail info@worldcitizen.tv nominations to be in this hall of guides to human sustainability
    JW
    Briefly the 3rd person Future Capitalism may wish to celebrate could not be here today because he died ,before his time, in Calcutta 1860. Today the oral rehydration that could have saved James Wilson is offered by community nurses at 10 cents a go by Dr Yunus’ inspired compatriot Fazle Abed of BRAC – Bangladesh’s and our globe’s other great benchmark for grassroots organisational systems. James was trying to change British Raj economics – a system transformation which ultimately became Gandhi’s truth-making. Incidentally this life mission involved Gandhi in 25 years of mentoring social action change with a peer barrister from the Bar of London who coincidentally my maternal grandfather. James Wilson’s notoriety in changing global economics was earned as a Scottish entrepreneur who came down to London in 1843 to boot vested interests out of the Houses of Parliament. His main innovation for doing this is a paper called The Economist. Founding this in 1843, James actually wished the paper be closed once 2 social action objectives were completed: end the corn laws and end capital punishment. As you know both have been completed in the UK, but dismally corn’s monopoly high price was only banished after being a direct amplifier of the Irish potato famine. When former Irish President Mary Robinson keynoted a Global reconciliation conference in London 2003, she began by pointing to the irony of an Irish lady speaking to Londoners given that over a century of troubles between London and Ireland were root caused in the the tragic follies ruled over by Great British Empiredom and corn lording in particular.     		DAD
    In my dad’s day, Journalists at The Economist were known to quip, perhaps James would NOT want the paper to be closed until the poverty compounded by EU’s agriculture policy is ended. Today inspired by Dr Yunus and emerging alumni of his such as Blil Gates, they might also quip don’t close until Capitalism’s Punishment is removed from wholly celebrating humanity. To flashback to dad: before reading a first in Cambridge economics in inspired by Keynes last years of lecturing, my dad had served as a teenage navigator in RAF’s bomber command in the war. So few Brits returned from that assignment that the RAC in 1943 offered almost free lifetime membership –one reason why we are all here today! A reason why I am here today is that dad was fortunately assigned to campaigns in Bangladesh and Burma. Dhaka was only a town in those days though another place Cox’s Bazar was as strategic then as Dr Yunus’ book wishes it soon will be. At The Economist, Dad continued the paper’s value of severe contests aimed at transparently mediating what futures leaders were compounding. In 1962, his future history survey shocked the conventional world by announcing Japan’s world innovation leadership impacts over the next generation. Between 1976-1984 he published an Entrepreneurial Revolution Trilogy. Part 1 saw a young Italian translator , Romano Prodi, hosting roundtables like this around the heresy that deep entreprenenurial breakthroughs start small. By 1982, entrepreneurial service economies were announcing the end of being bossed – since service teams multiply value with their customers and contextually from the grassroots up. Dad’s 1984 book asked whether Death of Distance’s unprecedented change forces would cause the globalisation generation to sustain or end the world. Mathematically, the systemic integration of localities into a global world can only compound one of these 2 opposite outcomes. If sustainability is to be humanity’s wish then halftime in the book (chapter 6) announced that by 2008 the world would need to be inspired by a Nobel prize winning economist to search out over 30000 community rising projects.     		MUHAMMAD YUNUS Well, I don’t know if you have any Scottish blood in you Dr Yunus, but after meeting you in Dhaka for 3 hours at the start of 2008, I feel confident that the human relay race of multiplying hi-trust through social business and win-win-win global’s free market models has moved its inspirational epicentre/ from St James to Dhaka. May I therefore propose a toast to the huge honor that in St James today we twenty people have a chance to listen to and debate your future capitalism wishes, and another 700 people of St James will rejoice in celebrating humanity with you tomorrow afternoon. Could I ask you to tell us of your wishes and please suggest any ways we can help. Then we can follow round the table as people identify themselves and open discussion on how citizens like Yu’N’Us can create a world without poverty.

    Selections from the archives of networkers of world class brands , brand blogspot, africanidol.tv , worldcitizen.tv and universityofstars.tv 08.1 Just playing with a few rolling concepts something 1970s marketers used to do until one popped up that everyone said win-win-win to. If anyone really gets this mail perhaps they could give me a hands up; want to get 20 minutes with Dr Yunus on a version of it next time he's in one of our easy to get to cities such as: london, paris, new york, DC. 0 Until Grameen exists operationally in a country , its yunus forum group appropriately branded and authorised could still be a forceforgood news hub swapping stories (and dream questions - why cant we find a free market home for orphan drugs?) Grameen Bangladesh wanted to test with citizen networks as well as stories citizens wanted their role model leading youth and fashion seeders to action 1 I think it would be good if not all Tomorrows Company www.forceforgood.com accolades were individual 1.1 we need a FFG journalist team who get yunus or who get tomorrows company or who gets map or who gets value multiplication is not bottom line value add; and that we need responsibility audits at sector levels even more than corporate levels etc and increasingly these journalists instincts dont cover business news just with the knee-jerk reaction quarterly number went up so company's value/goodwill is on an upward exponential who might this group connect as well as alan; there seem to be some folk at channel 4 news; David Frost gets it; my dad can still ferret out a few people, perhaps andrew neil.. and your web suggests Anthony Hilton might be on the side- the one UK chairman I would start with is sir john banham (when was CBI director general he supported sustainability debates and he has always campaigned for Industry sector responsibility being wholly different game for the bust Corporate Social Responsibility) -see if he can help with media's who's who -perhaps this isnt a declared forceforgood new item but tomorrows company hosting a biannual dinner for journalists who want to question sustainabilitys exponentials and see there are more of them than they knew- after all we are investigating 99% of all future wealth and health which is currently not being analysed sustainably or correctly 1.2 an absolutely FFG group is youth before they become superstars; yunus green children are in that category; as is Carolina Kluft swedish olympic gold medalist who tells journalists off for reporting her sports story and not her interest in African orphans; the model we need has been debated amongst gandhians and others for 5 years now http://universityofstars.tv Essentially Grameen World needs superstar ambassadors far more than Unicef does; and trainee superstars need to have chosen a grassrooted mission in life before they get surrounded by 100% celebrity life; and every multinational social brand could do with a superstar giving it free market share of voice; and other tricks that my networker of world class brands practitioners first asked The Economist's Year of The Brand to start questioning in 1988 1.3 perhaps this suggestion is too early; I dont want to stress our relationships until tomorrows company and grameen have got something they want from each other flowing irrevocably 2.1 parallels for every profession: Gandhis number 1 rule when he mentored my granddad for 25 years was when your empire's system is destroying local people, there will be something wrong about every profession's monopoly rule that needs changing if we are to get to the other side - so ever profession needs a biannual dinner for those who want to transform it from compounding badwill or blindwill to goodwill I believe the mindsets interviews that alan will be completing with father, yunus and others will provide pointers to where each profession is crashing us into its own short-term brick wall 2.2 I will be putting some of alan's slides up at http://egrameen.com -need to think carefully how to put our most important future history debates up at this web as grameen itself moves from brick to click! 2.3 Incidentally in tomorrows company can think of what to do with futurecapitalism.com , you can have it - could it be an international set of think-and-do clubs (if that's your sector) which Dr Yunus patron advisor to? Which one Indian club? South African club? Lesley could help with suggestions there and perhaps she and sofia could tell us if there is one dream club in s.america - eg is it around De Soto? tav might be able to tell us if berners lee still has a dream conference board to return the web's collaboration flows to that he intended in 1989 ...etc etc would you choose to try and ring into your and yunus's joining sustainability views of the world? 2.4 most of the above gets better and contextually deeper if we get the jointly published yunus and tomorrows company and FFG brochure on what a social business is and isnt out earlier rather than later, imo -it can be very short but it must end up with a definition that is unambiguous so that other social enterprise models do not dilute what future capitalism maps we are trying to open source 3.1 probably the biggest hidden agenda of all when I met Dhaka top team in first week of year was the question if we 5 people in Dhaka have an open source system of social abc maps that could help with community building everywhere let alone integrate sustainability investments the right exponential way round wherever a global sector is currently crashing, how do we network/share that with 6.5 billion people; mark has already video interviewed 4 yunus fans on that; need to extend the survey as well as start debating which of the 4 had forceforgood for 6.5 billion ideas some sort of thinktank windows on the world of goodwill's future capitalism needs spreading at each of the a,b, c levels chris macrae usa 301 881 1655 http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/news.aspx#newsitem42 "It's high time we put power back in hands of the right investors" By Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard The city these days is so sophisticated that hedge funds and other activists can vote to change company policy or fire a board at its annual meeting when they are in fact short of the stock - and therefore likely to profit from the shares falling. They can similarly build up a massive voting stake, easily up to 20%, when they have no financial interest in the company. They do this by using contracts for difference, stock borrowing and other devices that give them the benefits and voting rights of owners without their having to do anything as common and oldfashioned, or costly, as buying the shares. This poses a huge problem for boards of directors, who have to be accountable to shareholders. But which shareholders do they listen to when different groups want different things, and some of those with votes may well not be shareholders in the conventional sense at all? How do they distinguish between engaged activist investors, who may tell them uncomfortable truths they don't want to hear but have the longterm interests of the company at heart, and "drive-by activists", who may whisper seductive tales of optimising shareholder value but whose real interest is in extracting cash from the company now, even if that leaves it debilitated and unable to cope with tough times in the future? Tomorrow's Company, the thinktank that has an enviable record for putting its brains in areas most people fear to venture, said this week that, sponsored by pension-fund management group Hermes, it is to investigate "What's happening to ownership?" The comments above show why it is needed. Ownership patterns are changing, and perhaps the rights and obligations of ownership need to change too. The think-tank's founder director, Mark Goyder, points to the increasing emphasis on trading and short-term share-price movements at the expense of ownership obligations and disciplines, the blurring effect on clear thinking of the successive witch-hunts against hedge funds, private equity and sovereign wealth funds, and the need for clear thinking on what obligations owners have, and how these marry with the responsibilities of directors. We all have a stake in this. It is well-known in the City, but insufficiently realised in the country at large, that most of the rewards of growth reflected in improved corporate performance and higher share prices go to the fund managers and other intermediaries, not the clients. An investment banker once said he saw his activities as a tax on the saving classes, but it is not just his profession. The independent financial advisers, fund managers, pension consultants, custodians, privateequity houses and insurance and pension management companies between them suck out all the gain. The client, if he gets tax relief, may come out ahead - but very few do. The intermediaries have hijacked share ownership, and exploit it for their own benefit. The public don't understand what is going on, but they are not blind. They see the City bonuses at one end of the system and their wiped-out pensions at the other, so they know the system is no longer working as it should. But this unease gradually turns to resentment and alienation. The people of the country own the stock market through their pension and insurance policies, but they no longer feel that sense of ownership because they don't see the rewards. Instead, they are getting progressively more alienated from the process of wealth creation. This is potentially a huge threat to business in this country. Ask yourself why the Government can introduce hugely damaging legislation on capital gains tax and non-doms - laws that have the potential to severely undermine the wealth-creating potential of this country - and do so to a chorus of voter support. The shriller the protests from the City, the greater the popularity with the voters. These voters no longer believe the system belongs to them and works to their benefit. If they and, by extension the politicians, no longer feel a commonality of interest with the process of wealth generation, we are storing up huge problems for ourselves. That is why this latest venture from Tomorrow's Company comes not a moment too soon. SOVEREIGN wealth funds just can't win. A group of them made a presentation in Goteborg a few days ago to the International Corporate Governance Network, a body of fund managers dedicated to responsible ownership and good governance. The funds assured the group that they were passive investors who would absolutely not interfere with the way companies were run, nor seek to influence a board's strategy. The listeners were appalled. Influencing strategy was exactly what they thought the sovereign funds should do.