Excerpts:
“When last we left the chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, in mid-August, he had written a widely publicized e-mail lamenting the poisonous state of our nation’s politics. That led him to his first big idea: a call for a boycott of political contributions until Democrats and Republicans began to act in a nonpartisan way for the good of the country.”
” Starbucks is going to create a mechanism that will allow us citizens to do what the government and the banks won’t: lend money to small businesses. This mechanism is scheduled to be rolled out on Nov. 1.”
“Here is the most beautiful part about the whole arrangement. The donations to Create Jobs for USA will not be loaned to the CDFIs. They will be turned into capital — equity that can be leveraged. Pinsky and others told me that that equity can be leveraged 7 to 1, meaning that if 10 million Starbucks customers donate $5, that will support $350 million worth of lending. That’s real money.
The Starbucks Foundation is starting things off with a $5 million donation. Schultz is hoping to convince other national retail chains to participate as well — so that Starbucks isn’t the only place people can join in the effort. And, of course, he is hoping that Starbucks customers will flock to it in droves.
So am I. With the government and banks unwilling or unable, it’s time we took matters into our own hands. At this point, who else can we count on?”
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/nocera-we-can-all-become-job-creators.html?_r=1&hp
