HOMESTEAD: Fair Exchange law review article/ policy paper distributed May 2, 2005

[Deborah Groban Olson <dgo@esoplaw.com>]

Dear Homestead working group:

        

I assume
all of you got this email when I sent it to COG All. So please excuse
this second copy. I am sending this to make it easier for any of you to
respond to the Fair Exchange/Homestead Group about this. In fact, I will
now send the most detailed critique to date and my response to it to help
get things moving.

        

We are
very pleased to announce this link to the Fair Exchange law review
article /policy paper! (followed by the abstract). This is the research
and development paper funded by the Sloan Foundation that we have been
working on for the past year. There will be a policy conference at George
Washington University Law School in DC to discuss and critique it and to
consider implementation strategy on October 7, 2005. More details on the
conference will be forthcoming. Our space and resources for the
conference are very limited. However, we would like as many comments as
possible before the conference, so that we may improve the final document
presented in October. PLEASE ADDRESS YOUR COMMENTS TO
"<Homestead@cog.kent.edu>". That will be the location for
the discussion. Any response to this email will go only to Deb Olson and
Dan Bell. 

http://www.capitalownership.org/lib/OlsonFairExchangePaper.pdf

Abstract:
The policy proposal called "Fair Exchange" means that when
communities provide subsidies to businesses the citizens should get
equity managed by a community trust. This article describes large-scale
successful and unsuccessful legal and historical precedents for Fair
Exchange, comparing their virtues and drawbacks on issues of equity
acquisition and distribution, community impact on corporate governance,
and their local social and economic impacts. It provides model local,
state and federal legislation, which could also be used in global trade
agreements. It discusses the complex problem of quantifying non-financial
(but very real) community benefits for the existing precedents, community
benefit agreements, and proposed fair exchange models. It proposes basic
metrics for some community benefits. It describes the creation of a
Community Trust network including a mutual fund and voting trust
agreements to enable thousands of local community trusts to pool
resources, diversify their investment portfolios, and increase their
impact on corporate governance in conjunction with pension and socially
responsible investment funds. For each issue raised in the section on “
Issues confronting potential FE legislation” it proposes potential
alternative solutions. We will only know which ones work after
experimentation by a number of communities. It also discusses potential
Fair Exchange agreements governing use of the airwaves; its significance
in the policy debate about how to organize a real “ownership society”
without undermining social security; and its significance in confronting
the transfer of jobs from developed to developing countries or from
developing countries to China. There will be a policy conference October
7, 2005 at George Washington University Law School to critique this paper
and discuss implementation of the policy. 

Many thanks for all your interests.
Best regards,
Deb

Deborah Groban Olson
Executive Director
Capital Ownership Group
1021 Nottingham Road
Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230
Phone (313)331-7821
Fax (313) 331-2567
cog@kent.edu
www.capitalownership.org

dgo@esoplaw.com
www.esoplaw.com