Author promotes Slow Money

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

From an article by Susan Troller in The Capital Times:

A big new idea is a little like a seed; it needs fertile soil and a nurturing environment to flourish.

That’s why author, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Woody Tasch is in Madison, explaining and promoting his thoughts on Slow Money. It’s a bold perspective on financial investing focusing on getting local sources of money to support local businesses, especially those that have to do with the production of food.

Tasch, who has been part of a financial network that raised over $133 million since 1992 for about 200 ventures promoting sustainability, intends for Slow Money to become a national financial movement.

Judging by the enthusiastic response of a crowd of about 100 at Mills Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus Sunday evening, he may be onto something big.

Today Tasch is the featured speaker at a series of private workshops with food entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, financial experts, investors, policy directors and researchers.

“The current economic system is broken,” Tasch said flatly Sunday night. As evidence, he held up this week’s cover of The Economist, showing a textbook titled “Modern Economic Theory.” The book is melting.

“Money and investing must come back down to earth,” he added, as he argued for sustainability and responsibility in investing. Tasch believes this is an historic economic moment as we bump up against limits to growth.

What Tasch calls a restorative economy is at the heart of his new book, “Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered.”