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Trade for Good! Day Announced in Financial Markets
Trade for Good! Day Announced in Financial Markets
Published 05-03-05
Submitted by Thomas Kostigen
Approximately 19 billion shares of stock trade throughout the world on a daily basis. There is approximately a $19 billion shortfall to reach the United Nation Millennium Goal of poverty elimination.
"It doesn't take a math genius to juxtapose the numbers and see the solution," says Kostigen.
On September 2000, The UN adopted the Millennium Development Goals, and made a formal declaration to: "spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected."
There are eight Millennium Development Goals, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, halving those living on less then one dollar per day, by the year 2015.
But the annual shortfall pushes the achievement of those goals back -- indefinitely.
Trade for Good! calls for one day where the global financial industry -- investors, brokerages, exchanges -- joins together to eliminate poverty.
Borgen says, "Trade for Good! isn't really a capital raising campaign, so much as it's a capital redirection campaign toward a cause that will not only save lives but will create 4 billion more consumers on the planet. This is in everyone's best interest. War, conflict, disease -- today's headlines -- are all poverty-related."
December is typically the heaviest trading month in the financial markets. The exact date, and the logistics of Trade for Good! capital re-direction campaign will be announced in the coming months.
Meanwhile, exchanges, brokerages, investors and the financial media worldwide are being solicited to join the Trade for Good! campaign.
Email your support and/or questions to kostigen@kostigen.com, or clint@borgenproject.org. Or visit www.kostigen.com/trade.htm, or borgenproject.org/trade.html.
Major organizations, institutions and associations have already embraced the concept.
Kostigen notes that every one prospers from the Trade for Good! campaign because it will bring more positive attention and people to the financial markets, increasing trading volume and worldwide capital while at the same time helping to eradicate poverty. "It's good capitalism at work," he says.
A Presidential Proclamation for A Day of Goodwill in the financial markets is also being sought.
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Thomas M. Kostigen is a columnist for Dow Jones Market Watch. A former Bloomberg News editor, his work has appeared in numerous publications around the world, including The Washington Post, Financial Times, Worth, Variety, among many others. Besides journalism, Kostigen is a screenwriter and producer. His documentary work has taken him to impoverished regions ranging from Ethiopia to the Palestinian refugee camps. He is the author of the book, "What Money Really Means." Kostigen is on the advisory board of the Borgen Project.
Clint Borgen is the founder of the Borgen Project, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization whose mission is building public awareness and generating political pressure to eliminate poverty around the world. A former firefighter, Borgen worked with the United Nations in Europe and traveled extensively to various impoverished nations, including the Kosovo refugee camps during the war and "ethnic cleansing."
He is the author of "Geneva Nights."
