Social Enterprise and Philanthropy Investing In The Global Financial Markets

As globalization keeps its rampant and seemingly inexorable ride, the financial  implications of international social investing become apparent for all economic players, and painfully so for Social Investors. The current international finance environment, marked by the dollar devaluation, the global financial markets crisis and the international trade liberalization has a significant impact on social investing.

1. – The Dollar Devaluation

Either because of their inability to attract financial managers skilled in FOREX hedging and/or their inability to access the derivatives market, smaller-scale investors (a bracket made up for the most part by social investors and philanthropists) have seen their “helping power” significantly eroded. Some actors, losing their advantage as the dollar devaluate have been unable to keep operational costs at bay and have been forced to “go out of business”, as they become a sub-optimal solution and other organizations with stronger currencies are now doing the job.n Last months Federal Reserve’s interest rates decrease will likely keep the dollar at the current low prices for the foreseeable future.

 

Economic Development and Venture Capital In Latin America

For long South Florida has been considered the U.S. capital of Latin America. The significant  inflow of Latin American expatriates first from Castro’s Cuba during the 60”and 70’ and later from other troubled Latin American countries (Colombians fleeing from the guerrillas, Argentineans fleeing from the economic crisis, Venezuelans fleeing Chavez, etc) have created singular social landscape. Contrasting with other states where Latino immigrants populate the lower paid job bracket,   Florida’s Latin population has a significant professional and entrepreneurial community, made up by second generation successful Cubans and first generation mid-upper class immigrants with deeply rooted business and familiar connections in the continent’s power networks.

Given this wealth of relationships Miami seems to be ideally located to play a pivotal role as a meeting point where big American Venture Capital meets Latin American entrepreneurs. This hasn’t happened yet.  The root cause of this is two pronged: At the hemispheric level, entrepreneurship in Latin America faces significant challenges regarding their human capital utilization, the capital allocation processes, the social cost of failure and the economies of scale required for the Venture Capital model to work. At the local level Miami haven’t been able to provide the “ecosystem” required to foster economic development trough innovative enterprise.