ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

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This interview for # and '' (a show produced by a team of the station's reporters) is a weekly radio economics and all-things-business program with international reach. This week Claudia Cragg talks to about 'Honeybees and Locusts' and discusses why all of us in business and the world at large should adopt as many of the traits of the former as possible to discourage the continuing plague of the latter.

In this interview, Avery, who is one of the founders of the , points out that if only the had been followed into the run up to the Great Crash of 2008, it more than likely could have been avoided or at least significantly minimized. Furthermore, many very successful companies, , purposefully follow SL principles to their very evident and consequent bottom-line corporate advantage. 

The idea is that the honey bee creators, makers and providers lend valuable things for others” to an environment while the locust “takers and predators” are those who, says Avery, “extract value from others without contributing much in return”. The distinction comes from a so-called founding work of modern capitalism,  (which first appeared as a poem in 1705).

The implication for those who may still believe that capitalism, as we see it today, is viable in the long term, is that the adoption of these principles encourages bee-like virtues and so discourages the locusts.

But is that what we see today? The nasty little secret of much of C21st business may be that capitalism not only comes with moral hazards (as often required to meet sometimes greedy and ultimately unsustainable $$$ stockholder demands) but may actually depend on that climate for much of its success.

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According to , never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with the economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming, he says, and it is this that he discusses here with 's Claudia Cragg for

But just what is this thing called a new economy, and how might it take shape in America? In ?, Gar Alperovitz speaks directly to the reader about where we find ourselves in history, why the time is right for a new-economy movement to coalesce, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He also suggests what the next system might look like—and where we can see its outlines, like an image slowly emerging in the developing trays of a photographer’s darkroom, already taking shape.

He proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American.

Alperovitz calls for an evolution, not a revolution, out of the old system and into the new. That new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy.

For the growing group of Americans pacing at the edge of confidence in the old system, or already among its detractors, What Then Must We Do?, Alperovitz believes, offers an elegant solution for moving from anger to strategy.

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In the week celebrating the 50th anniversary (January 8, 1964) since, in what many consider to be one of the most memorable ever addresses, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his “” and introduced that would expand the federal government’s role in poverty reduction efforts. This set in motion the creation of programs such as Head Start, food stamps (now SNAP), work study, Community Action Agencies, VISTA, Medicare and Medicaid. Our guest for this edition of 's '' is , author of : How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.

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Here novelist speaks with 's Claudia Cragg about ''.

"In the winter of 1897, Elspeth Howell treks across miles of snow and ice to the isolated farmstead in upstate New York where she and her husband have raised their five children. Her midwife's salary is tucked into the toes of her boots, and her pack is full of gifts for her family. But as she crests the final hill, and sees her darkened house and a smokeless chimney, immediately she knows that an unthinkable crime has destroyed the life she so carefully built."

"Her lone comfort is her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, who joins her in mourning the tragedy and planning its reprisal. Their long journey leads them to a rough-hewn lake town, defined by the violence both of its landscape and of its inhabitants. There Caleb is forced into a brutal adulthood, as he slowly discovers truths about his family he never suspected, and Elspeth must confront the terrible urges and unceasing temptations that have haunted her for years. Throughout it all, the love between mother and son serves as the only shield against a merciless world."

"A scorching portrait of guilt and lost innocence, atonement and retribution, resilience and sacrifice, pregnant obsession and primal adolescence, The Kept is told with deep compassion and startling originality, and introduces James Scott as a major new literary voice."

More about James Scott at

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(For Denver/Boulder's 'It's The Economy)

The rapid spread of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has temporarily boosted US natural gas and oil production… and sparked a massive environmental backlash in communities across the country. The fossil fuel industry is trying to sell fracking as the biggest energy development of the century, with slick promises of American energy independence and benefits to local economies.

Heinberg's 'Snake Oil' casts a critical eye on the oil-industry hype that has hijacked America’s energy conversation. This is the first book to look at fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives, informed by the most thorough analysis of shale gas and oil drilling data ever undertaken. Is fracking the miracle cure-all to our energy ills, or a costly distraction from the necessary work of reducing our fossil fuel dependence?

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For KGNU's 'It's The Economy', Claudia Cragg speaks here with MIT's Ofer Sharone about latest work. In this, he discussed that today 4.7 million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months. In France more than ten percent of the working population is without work. In Israel it’s above seven percent. And in Greece and Spain, that number approaches thirty percent. Across the developed world, the experience of unemployment has become frighteningly common—and so are the seemingly endless tactics that job seekers employ in their quest for new work.

Flawed System/Flawed Self delves beneath these staggering numbers to explore the world of job searching and unemployment across class and nation. Through in-depth interviews and observations at job-search support organizations, Ofer Sharone reveals how different labor-market institutions give rise to job-search games like Israel’s résumé-based “spec games”—which are focused on presenting one’s skills to fit the job—and the “chemistry games” more common in the United States in which job seekers concentrate on presenting the person behind the résumé. By closely examining the specific day-to-day activities and strategies of searching for a job, Sharone develops a theory of the mechanisms that connect objective social structures and subjective experiences in this challenging environment and shows how these different structures can lead to very different experiences of unemployment.

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with the delightfully husky-voiced Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of  and, before that, editorial director of the Chinese edition of  and the editor-in-chief of  Hong Kong where she also co-published several other  magazines.

Cheung says that in the early days of fashion shoots for Vogue China, Westerners thought only of “'cheongsams, opium beds and 'In the Mood for Love'”, but she had to let them know that was very patronising. She is not interested, she says, in being told what Chinese women should or should not do or wear. Through her work, she is trying she says to create an energy among her readers and while she is not what she terms a 'fashion feminist', she does cares about how her Chinese readers feel about their lives and being happy because “life is short”.

Born in 1966 Cheung recently took part in the International New York Times S.E.A. Of Luxury conference, @INYTLuxury, hosted by Suzy Menkes, designed the organizers say to “bring South East Asia out of the shadows with an  that looked at Asia both as as a luxury goods supplier, as well as a powerful consumer base”.

The daughter of a Chinese diplomat, Cheung graduated from  in 1990 where she obtained degrees in law and English language and literature. She subsequently received an  degree from  and then in 1993 took a position as a writer at 'Eastern Express', an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, She covered all aspects of life there in the run-up to the handover to China in 1997 and then, in 2001, was named editor-in-chief of  Hong Kong and, in 2003,editorial director at  China in Shanghai. When publisher  wanted to launch Vogue in China, the company asked Cheung to take the lead and since 2005 she has been editorial director.

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Speaking to KGNU's Claudia Cragg in person @INYTLuxury held recently in Singapore Livia Firth (yes, Colin IS her husband) says that girls or young women should wear their clothes thoughtfully, each piece at least 30 times, in the name of 'Sustainability'.

Because of her work with the GCC, Livia Firth was awarded in November 2012 the title of 

Firth is the brains behind the 'Green Carpet Challenge, a fast moving, dynamic project working to unlock “Sustainable Style” in the fashion industry. Since its creation in 2009, she and the GCC have blazed a trail working with A-list designers pioneering sustainability in brands at the world’s most high profile events. From the Golden Globes and Academy Awards to the Met Ball and Cannes Film Festival, the GCC has collaborated with all the iconic design houses in the world winning widespread critical acclaim and international media attention.

Most recently, with  – one of the world’s largest privately owned luxury jewellery and accessory companies – we launched its journey to sustainable luxury by forging a philanthropic relationship with South America’s most influential mining NGO: the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM). 

Previously in September 2012, the GCC created ‘’ – a unique exhibition pairing eight seminal fashion designers with eight iconic films to create a collection of striking gowns. The exhibition, which saw the British Fashion Council (BFC) and the British Film Institute (BFI) worked together for the first time, opened London Fashion Week and was celebrated at the London Film Festival, before being shown in Harrods. 

In March 2013, the GCC created the GCC Brand Mark and launched with a new frontier for sustainable style: the world’s first zero deforestation certified handbag collection from Amazon leather.

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In this interview with Claudia Cragg for 's 'It's The Economy'  the focus is on China, with a review of the late last year, and the opportunities for US and others. Amidst a barrage of criticism and fiscal negativity directed towards that country, we talk with a native-born woman, US-educated , Managing Director and Vice Chairman of J P Morgan. She is in a unique position to discuss what to expect economically from the new leader Xi Jing Ping, from her ringside seat as a significant very high-level financial advisor both to China on the US and also to the US on China.

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An interview with The International New York Times (formerly International Herald Tribune) Suzy Menkes, @INYTLuxury 2013. She is the woman who has long unearthed every new fashion trend for The International Herald Tribune (now the Intl. N Y Times) believes that not only are the Chinese coming (leaping forward where Japan once did) but that sustainability will be part of their, and all our, fashion futures.