This all sounds good, Mary said at the end of the day. So now, what else can you do?
They regarded her. You tell us, they said. What kind of thing did you have in mind? And why?
Mary sighed. They were never going to be the source of change. It just wasn’t in their DNA, either institutionally or individually.
She ran down a list that Dick and Janus Athena had made for her. Outlawing dark pools and killing them off. Putting significant delays in high-frequency trading. Creating high-frequency trading taxes big enough to get trading back to human speed. Calculating basic necessities needed and providing these gratis to under-served communities.
Oh dear oh my! Not what central banks do!
Their first response, as always. But they had already strayed far out of their lane, as one of them put it.
More like a bull over the pasture fence, she thought. A herd of big bulls off into the wild, looking around, didn’t see any more fences— this then so scary a sight that at first they tried to conjure back some fences, enclosure being so much more comfy than freedom. Of course trust in money must be protected, as their prime directive; and that directive itself was a fence, hurray!
But wouldn’t killing the dark pools create more trust in money, Mary inquired, rather than less?
They had to agree. And in general, less autonomy for loose money might increase trust in fiat money generally.
And high-frequency trading, Mary asked, wasn’t it simply rent, parasiting on productive exchanges?
She found it funny to be speaking of rent as if it weren’t the fundamental action of the economic system these people upheld, but they liked to think otherwise. Anything to get them to screw their courage to the sticking place. And courage was always necessary when contemplating regicide. Could anyone kill King Capital? Mary doubted it, but if anyone could do it, it was surely these insiders, the people running the system. These thirteen people were close enough to the royal body to get the knives in before anyone could stop them. Et tu, Brute? Yes, Caesar, me too. Die. Into the ash can of history.
So now they nodded as they discussed things, and translated Mary’s proposals into more respectable policy formulations. They avoided any large conclusions that would make them aware of their temerity. Just numbers, juggling some numbers, and all for the sake of stability. And since this was partly true, she could let them get on with it, encourage them more.
At the end of the meeting, the Chinese finance minister, Madame Chan, joined her at the west window, where the late sun was making the Farallons again look like a sea serpent’s spine. What was that rising, there in the west?
These are just trims, she said to Mary with a smile. Buttoning up the coat you already made. Surely you don’t mean to stop there?
What do you have in mind?
We’ve been looking at what India is doing. They’re leading the way now in all kinds of things.
They were radicalized, Mary said.
Yes, and who wouldn’t be? We don’t want what happened to them to happen in China, or anywhere else. So now they’re teaching us regenerative agriculture, and we need it. But of course it keeps coming back to how we pay for these good things.
I suppose, Mary groused.
Chan smiled. Of course. Think of it as land reform. That’s a financial arrangement too. So, land taxes, which in China means a tenure tax. Creation of a commons for every necessity. Also, simply the legal requirement that private businesses be employee-owned.
Mary shook her head skeptically as she listened, but she was smiling too, thinking that now the baton had passed to this woman. A woman with real power, huge power. We’ll back you, she said happily. Take the lead and we’ll back you. And Madame Chan nodded, pleased with her.
Afterward Mary had been planning to fly home, but she cancelled that, and got her team to book a train sleeper and then a clipper ship, New York to Marseille. She worked all the way home.
85
Hi, I am here to tell you about Argentina’s Shamballa Permaculture Project. We are representatives of Armenia’s ARK Armenia, happy to be here. Down in Australia we’ve connected up our Aboriginal Wetland Burning, Shoalwater Culture, Gawula, Greening Australia, How Aboriginals Made Australia, Kachana Land Restoration, One Acre Small Permaculture Project, Permaculture Research Institute, Purple Pear Farm, Rehydrating the Landscape, Regenerate Australia, and the Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor. We’re a busy crowd!
We are from Belize’s Coral Reef Restoration. I represent Bolivia’s Food Security. I, Borneo’s How to Restore a Rainforest. We are from Brazil’s Centro de Experimentos Forestaisis, also Restoration Through Agroforestry. We come to you from Burkina Faso’s The Forest of Lilengo, and the group Reforesting with Ancient African Farming Practices. Cameroon here: the Bafut Ecovillage.
Canada’s delegation represents Bkejwanong Traditional Knowledge, Jardins d’Ambroisie, the Great Bear Rainforest, Miracle Farms, Taking Root, and Water for the Future. China’s delegation is happy to speak for A Man Plants a Forest, Eco-Civilization, Greening China’s Desert, Horqin Desert Reforestation, Karamay Ecological District, Kbuqi Desert Greening the Silk Road, Loess Plateau Watershed Restoration, Transforming Deserts to Cropland, World’s Largest Man-made Forest, and Zhejiang Green Rural Revival Program.
From the Congo we are Bonobo Conservation, Participatory Mapping, and Virunga National Park. From Costa Rica, we are the Orange Peel Experiment, Punta Mona, and Vida Verde Water Retention. I am here to proudly speak for Cuba’s Sustainable Agriculture Revolution, on its eighty-fifth birthday. We are from Denmark’s Vitsohus Permakultur. I have been sent to you by Ecuador’s Cloudforest Agroforestry. I from Egypt’s Creating a Forest in the Desert. From England we represent Agroforestry Research Trust, the Eden Project, Knepp Estate Rewilding, Rewilding Britain, and River Restoration.
From Eritrea we are Manazares Mango Regeneration, from Ethiopia, Ethiopia Rising, the Miracle of Merere, Regreening Ethiopia’s Highlands, Restoring Ecosystems, and the Watershed Movement. For France we happily represent Pur Projet Agroforestry. From Guatemala we are Reserva de Biosfera Maya and the
