Michael Shuman at SPACE

Michael Shuman: Local Dollars, Local Sense

Thursday 05.03.2012, Starts at 7:00 PM, free, All Ages

A growing body of evidence suggests that the most promising way to create new jobs is to nurture new, small, and locally owned new businesses. Small, local businesses constitute roughly half a typical community’s economy, and even more in rural areas and small towns. Yet almost none of Americans’ $30 trillion in long-term savings—in stocks, bonds, pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance funds—goes into these businesses.

In his new book, Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity (Chelsea Green, 2012), Michael Shuman argues that the most important economic stimulus opportunity for the United States today—and one that would cost almost nothing to implement—would be to relax securities laws that stand in the way investing in local business.

Shuman will discuss how new investment tools – including those just legalized in a new Crowdfunding Law – could begin to move as much as $15 trillion to local economies and create millions of new jobs. There will be time available for questions and answers.

Presented by Portland Buy Local. Longfellow Books will be on-site selling copies of Shuman’s books. Portland’s Downtown District will be providing 2 hours of free parking to attendees of the lecture. Wild Iris Inn, Tsunami Tattoo and Coffee By Design are also sponsors of the event.