Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money

We have to find a new form of economy, an economy that knows how to govern its limits, an economy that respects nature and acts at the service of man, a situation where political and humanistic choices govern the economy and not the other way around, We have to discover new economic relationships that move at a more natural pace. This is the potential of slow money."---From the Foreword by Carlo Petrini

"Woody Tasch has one of those fast minds that always seem to ask the right slow questions. He is on to something; a new vision of developing capital in a way that might offer a true alternative to faster-and-faster, bigger and bigger, more and more global, I've been saying for years that we need to feed the soil, not the plant---slow money is about feeding the soil of the economy."---Eliot Coleman, farmer and author of The New Organic Grower, Four-Season Harveest, and the Winter Harvest Handbook

"Now that the mathematical manure of maximum leverage has hit the fan of infinite natural resources. [Tasch] presents a compelling case for the rich compost of `slow' money, and for investment criteria that can sustain and preserve the planet's wealth for generations to come. Indispensable reading, to be placed on the same shelf as Wendell Berry and E. F. Schumacher."---Gregory Whitehead, Treasurer, The Whitehead Foundation

"This book is an essential read for anyone who is concerned about the human condition and our planet, Few-have taken the idea of walking your talk this much to its essence---all the way to where money meets the earth, so that we can begin to build a truly healthy economy. ---Mark Finser, Chair of the Board, RSF Social Finance

"Every once in a while, an idea comes around that you immediately know is not only a good one, but in fact is an absolutely necessary one Slow money is such an idea."---Tom Stearns, President, High Mowing Organic Seeds.

NPR calls it a movement. Acres U.S.A. calls it a revolution. Business week online calls it "one of the big ideas for 2010." Change.org calls it one of the top fifteen Ideas For Change.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents the path for bringing money back down to eart---philosophically, strategically, and pragmatically---and with an entrepreneurial spirit that is informed by decades of work by the thousands of CEOs, investors, grantmakers, food producers, and consumers who are seeding the restorative economy.

The months and years ahead will surely continue to see a flood of books proposing micro- and macro-economic fixes to the financial crises of the day. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money brings a different visison---a meta-economic vision, looking abouve the top line and below the bottom line, a new way of seeing what is going on in the soil of the economy.

This is the path toward a financial system that serves people and place as much as it serves industry sectors and markets, the path toward the nurture capital industry, serving one million investors investing one percent of their assets in local food systems.

Slow Money emerges from Woody Tasch's decades of work as a venture capitalist; foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur. His explorations shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility---a fiduciary responsibility that is not stuck in the industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but which reflects the economic, social, and environmental realities of the twenty first century.

These inquiries take us from the jokes of his father to the insights of his son, from the boardrooms of foundations and start-up companies to the farm fields of Vermont, from gopher holes in New Mexico to the possibilities of an alternative stock exchange, from Carlo Petrini to Muhammad Yunus, from Thoreau to Soros.

Is it a movement or is it an investment strategy? Yes.