WAAS Mentors: TAO of finance

Webinar #2 on May 26, 2021

Stefan Brunnhuber is the Program Director of the WAAS Expert Group on Innovative Financial Strategies. Dr. Brunnhuber, Member of the WAAS Board of Trustees, is a socio-economist and psychiatrist who has been actively engaged in the activities for WAAS for the past five years. As an active member of the New Economic Theory Working Group, he has introduced new approaches to fund the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently Medical Director & Chief Medical Officer at the Diakonie Kliniken Zschadrass, Colditz and Chief Medical Officer Department of Integral Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy.Development needs have primarily been financed through private sector financing, conventional public sector funding and philanthropic commitment. These sources are not sufficient in scale and speed to meet the pressing finance needs. The world community is too busy repairing, stabilizing, and refunding the system to maintain the stability of the existing system. The introduction of a parallel electronic currency specifically designed to finance global commons, and a human centered economy would provide the necessary resources to achieve the UN SDGs while stabilizing the existing monetary system. The development of cryptocurrencies based on blockchain distributed ledger technologies has prompted leading central banks around the world to study the potential application of this approach to directly inject purchasing power without dependence on the banking system. Proposals are now being studied by an international expert group on how this approach can be utilized to finance the huge multi-trillion dollar annual investment requirements for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, with special emphasis on investments in human resources and environmental protection. A report of the expert group will soon be published.

Agenda:

Speaker: Stefan Brunnhuber, Medical Director, Diakonie Hospital, Germany; Trustee, WAAS
Moderator: Luvuyo Madasa, Executive Director, ReimagineSA NPC; JFWAAS
Panelists: WAAS Junior Fellows