Awakened Economics: Rethinking Growth, Profit, and Purpose, with Bond Snodgrass
In this eye-opening episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, host Andrew Cohn is joined by Bond Snodgrass—banker, sustainability entrepreneur, and creator of Awakened Economics—for a rich conversation about reimagining how we lead, measure success, and shape the systems we live in.
Bond shares his personal journey from the high-stakes world of global finance to a deeper spiritual awakening sparked by a health crisis. That turning point led him to question the economic assumptions we take for granted—especially the idea that growth always equals progress. Together, Bond and Andrew explore how leaders can bring more consciousness into business, without sacrificing performance.
From ESG investing and stakeholder capitalism to redefining what we even mean by “value,” this episode offers bold ideas and grounded insights for leaders who want to build organizations that serve both people and the planet. It’s part vision, part toolkit—and all heart.
Ready to rethink what leadership and economics can be? Hit play and join the conversation.
And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode that challenges, inspires, and uplifts your leadership journey.
Key Takeaway
Spirituality in business is possible: High-consciousness leadership doesn’t negate profitability—it deepens responsibility.
Stakeholder capitalism expands the definition of who matters in business beyond shareholders to include employees, communities, and the planet.
Sustainability is multidimensional: It encompasses economic viability, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship.
Young professionals care: Gen Z and Millennials are driving demand for purpose-driven companies and ESG transparency.
Economics can evolve: Bond’s “awakened definition” of economics centers on interdependence, service, and sustainable well-being, replacing outdated models of infinite self-interest.
Progress, not perfection: Even small commitments to sustainability or spiritual values by leaders can make meaningful shifts.
In This Episode:
[00:00:01] Bond’s spiritual awakening and health crisis
[00:00:52] Introduction to the podcast and guest
[00:03:57] Bond’s career journey and spirituality
[00:08:24] High consciousness in business
[00:09:31] Defining spirituality and connection
[00:11:38] Community and the conscious business movement
[00:13:01] Shareholder vs. stakeholder capitalism
[00:14:22] Three pillars of sustainability
[00:16:18] Defining sustainability and its origins
[00:17:52] Theoretical vs. practical impact for leaders
[00:19:08] Progress and CEO commitment
[00:20:55] ESG reporting and market demand
[00:26:53] Challenges for corporations in sustainability
[00:27:56] Responding to business leader skepticism
[00:30:13] Benefits of sustainability for business
[00:32:42] Sustainable finance and green bonds
[00:32:56] Regional differences in sustainability practices
[00:35:26] Trends and the future of sustainability
[00:37:09] Challenges in ESG implementation
[00:38:15] Political pushback and communication issues
[00:39:30] Economic benefits of sustainability initiatives
[00:41:26] Introduction to awakened economics
[00:44:06] Proposing a conscious economic model
[00:46:25] Awakened definition of economics
[00:49:41] Resources and closing
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Bond Snodgrass
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bond-snodgrass-99274932/en
Awakened Economics: https://awakenedeconomics.substack.com/
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Watch our Podcast episode
Transcript
Bond Snodgrass: My interest in spirituality began during that time. I went through a health crisis, and as I was traversing that health crisis, I encountered loving kind teachers and masters that showed me the benefits of spirituality.
Andrew Cohn: As you dive into this, as you dive into this nexus between high consciousness and business, do you find yourself alone?
Bond Snodgrass: Instead of having the core of your economic theory be a utility maximizing self-interested individual, or a profit maximizing self-interested company, why doesn't the starting point be a fully conscious human being?
Intro: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, hosted by Andrew Cohn. Andrew is a trusted counselor, coach, and consultant who works with leaders in teams to increase productivity and fulfillment in the workplace. If you'd like to connect with Andrew about individual or team coaching, leadership workshops or team alignment, please go to www.lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I speak with Bond Snodgrass, a different kind of guest. I'm so grateful to have him on the podcast. Bond is a banker, economist, commentator about economics and the role of economics in society, the connection between economics and spirituality, and as he talks about it, a more expanded notion of economic relationships. And he has a delightful regular column essay called Awakened Economics. And he talks about how he came to create that. He talks about shareholder capitalism versus stakeholder capitalism more broadly. And he just brings a very, somewhat academic, but very practical view and broad view about the role of economics in our lives, about how we can interact with economic markets in more conscious ways and what that means for leading ourselves and our businesses, and even our countries. It's a fascinating conversation with Bond snodgrass. Enjoy.
In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Bond Snodgrass, and Bond brings a different perspective, a fresh perspective, to some very practical things, as well as some very academic and theoretical things. Really looking forward to our conversation, Bond and I go back a ways which we may talk about a little bit, but I'm much more interested in hearing about what you're doing now Bond. And Bond is a banking executive, an entrepreneur. His latest initiative is Sustain Array, which provides sustainability guides for businesses. It's a clearing house for sustainability resources in North America, if not globally. And perhaps you can clarify that for us. And you also have a wonderful column and voice in the world with Awakened Economics. Which also gets my attention as an economics, international relations, I don't wanna say scholar, that would be insane for me to use the word scholar for myself, but student at one point in time and still student. And I really appreciate the varied and interesting and wise perspectives you have about these topics. So let's get into some of this. But Bond, welcome to the podcast.
Bond Snodgrass: Thank you very much, Andrew.
Andrew Cohn: So what has brought you, maybe you could talk a bit about your career and what's brought you into this place where some of what you're doing. I believe it really touches on the connection between spirituality, broadly defined and societal leadership, perhaps business leadership as well. So tell us a little about your journey please.
Bond Snodgrass: Thank you. My professional life is primarily as a banker. I worked at large global investment banks for about 20 years. During that time, I was mostly in equities, equity capital markets more specifically. In Latin American equities and emerging American equities, I spent time as a senior sell side equity analyst. In other words, I analyzed big companies that quoted on Latin American stock exchanges, wrote reports for investors, valued them, and made recommendations. And did that for about half of this career that I'm mentioning. And then for the other half I migrated to sales. It's a role called institutional equity sales. And in that case, what I would do is I would take the product that was developed by our research analysts and sell it into large institutional asset managers, primarily in the United States, but also in the UK, Europe and in Latin America. So that is where my business grounding comes from. Primarily in financial services. And then within that, analyzing companies in multiple industries, industrials, construction, consumer products, financial services transportation. And so it brought me a pretty broad view of what businesses and business models are. My interest in spirituality began during that time, I went through a health crisis and as I was traversing that health crisis I encountered loving kind teachers and masters that showed me the benefits of spirituality and the connection. We were just talking about the mind body connection before we started recording the connection between physical wellbeing and spiritual wellbeing. And I've always been quite an enthusiastic student. So once I began to realize this infinite resource was available. I dove in and spent a lot of years on my own exploring different spiritual traditions, different comparative theology, comparative religion, and I was also an economics major, rewinding prior to my time in business at Boston University. I majored in economics and international relations. And I loved it. I enjoyed that thoroughly, but as I was traversing this path, this spiritual path and coming into contact with this depth of wisdom and knowledge, I noticed a pretty glaring contradiction between what I was learning. What I've learned from economists or from economics and how economics measures growth and then what my spiritual teachers and masters were teaching me about how spirituality measures growth. And one day I realized that If every person in the world at the same time, you know the thought experiment here, if every person in the world at the same time were to have a spiritual awakening and became less interested in consumption for consumption sakes, but as a result of that became happier, healthy, more connected people, economists would consider that an absolute disaster. It would be measured as a crisis of the highest order if people decided to consume less, and so this caused me to revisit a lot of what I learned in economics. And I began to explore both economics or spirituality. Do I have anything to say to each other? And out of that, emerged this project called Awakened Economics, which you mentioned, which is now on Substack Awakened Economics on Substack. And so that is how I became interested in spirituality and then spirituality and economics but returning to the business element of it, I became interested in the idea of high consciousness thought in business. And so this is where we're gonna begin to talk a little bit about spirituality in leadership. And I became interested in something that I vaguely called high consciousness thought in business. And to me, high consciousness and spirituality are the same thing. And what do I mean by spirituality in this case? To me, spirituality, or the way I'll talk about it in this conversation, is simply transcending the limits of self and ego and feeling a deep connection with yourself, with others, I'm sorry–feeling a deep connection with others now with your surroundings, realizing that Andrew's wellbeing is related to my wellbeing. The wellbeing of my community, of my family, of my neighborhood, of my city, of my state, of my country, of the planet, the wellbeing of others is also important to my wellbeing. And so that's the outcome of spirituality. This deep sense of connection with others and with your surroundings, so in the business world I began to ask myself how can we bring this to bear in the business world? And the business world is very different from the world of spirituality. If you think of spirituality as the invisible world, morals, values and business on the other side are very practical. And businesses at the end of the day have to generate a profit. Now you do it, and there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. Business needs profit. Business has to make money in order to survive. It just goes without saying. But can the search for profit somehow or another be influenced by spirituality? Can you have a high consciousness approach to business? And fast forward to where we are right now, this, and the answer is yes you can. Yes you can. And what I realized as I connected the way that high consciousness thought as I was thinking about it now manifests in the business world now is in sustainability. In sustainable business practices. And in turn, the way managers within these businesses lead and provide leadership can also be influenced by higher consciousness, by spirituality and by sustainable practices as well. So that's, I don't know if I made sense there to try to weave these three themes together, but I'll just pause there and see if that was an adequate introduction.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, I think so. Beautiful. And there's a lot to talk about from what you've just shared. It's, and perhaps the place I would start is as you dive into this, as you dive into this nexus between high consciousness and business, do you find yourself alone. Do you find fellow travelers on the way? Are you operating in fallow ground or are you finding connections and resources?
I'm curious to know what this journey has been like for you and is there that connection and community on the way or perhaps not yet?
Bond Snodgrass: That's a great question. And the answer is that there's very much a connection. The answer is yes. There's a lot of people in this space. Things are changing. There's a lot of change, a lot of wonderful, smart mission-driven, purpose-driven business men and women who are precisely trying to change the way to change business practices in a more sustainable direction. So it's a whole movement. I could, sustainability has become, has evolved towards science, and you can now get master's degrees in sustainable development. There's a bachelor's degree in the subject. And on the more philosophical, theoretical side. For example, there's a movement called Conscious Capitalism, which was started by the founder of Whole Foods and a colleague. And they tried to bring about change in the way businesses operate and think about themselves. And the phrase that is used to capture this idea. There's a lot of vocabulary, new vocabulary around it is stakeholder capitalism versus shareholder capitalism. And in turn, this informs sustainability best practices as well. So in shareholder capitalism, the idea is that you have to make as much money for the owners of the company as possible. That's it. And the only interest group in this way of doing things are the owners, the shareholders of the company. So the manager, the employees are all in service to maximizing profit for the owners now. And that's called Shareholder capitalism. On the other hand, stakeholder capitalism is the idea that the owners are a very important and vital group. But so too are the employees, so too are the suppliers, so too are the families of the employees, so too are the regulators. So too is the community in which the physical assets of a company may be located? So too is the environment where the company operates, right? So you expand. The vision is to make the most amount of money possible, maximize profit for the shareholders to the idea of this business operating in a larger ecosystem, in a larger environment. And so there you have the idea of stakeholder stakeholder capitalism.
Andrew Cohn: And the opportunity to be conscious of the needs of these different stakeholders and the interests of these different stakeholders rather than simply the single focus on shareholders.
Bond Snodgrass: Exactly.That's exactly right. So sustainability. And then I wanna get into the idea, and then segue back to spirituality and leadership. So once you start thinking about stakeholders instead of just the shareholders, then you've taken a step towards higher consciousness and a step towards deeper connections within the company. And I think that's very vital and very important. And sustainability as it's thought of, has three components. The way we think about sustainability now, corporate sustainability, and most three components are social, environmental, and economic, right? So the economic portion covers what we traditionally think of as the primary role of business, which is to make money because you gotta make money. You have a company that has to be profitable or else it's gonna die. You need your cash inflows to exceed your cash outflows. It's pretty basic math, right? So that's the economic portion. But the environmental portion is also, what we traditionally, what is my environmental footprint and the two major metrics there are emissions. Your greenhouse gas emissions, your carbon footprint and your water usage, your water footprint, knowing and how you use resources and there's a lot of work that's done in that space you may have heard of, for example, of circular economy. They're circular economy experts take it a bit deeper, but the famous three Rs’, your reduce, reuse, recycle. No, that's, that's a part of environmental sustainability. And then there is social sustainability as well. So those are three elements. And I would say the number one, the most important element in any social sustainability framework is human rights. My workers are my employees, the regulators– they're human beings and they have certain rights, so you get back to the United Nations convention on human rights. There's a lot that you can take. The International Labor Association has wonderful metrics that you can use to ensure that you're treating your employees to the best of your ability. Know with compassion and with care and taking into account there and just right. So again, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. At some point you get into an alphabet soup of acronyms and complexity and so forth. But at its most basic level, its corporate sustainability is those three. Elements of social, economic, and environmental. And even if we can take a step back even further, what is sustainability? The definition that's most commonly used is quite simple and elegant, and it comes from a United Nations Commission on sustainable development from, I think it was 1987, very famous, called the Brundtland Commission and they said more or less I hope the words are, get it right here. They said that sustainability is meeting the needs of the current generation without putting at risk the ability of future generations to meet their needs as well. Okay. So that's what sustainability is. So as you can see there's this wonderful set of connections between sustainability, a higher consciousness, spirituality, when you think of it as simply this deep sense of connection between all people on the planet and business, right? So that's how all of it flows together.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Thank you. Lot to unpack there. And just to ask another broad question, and all of this is happening on the theoretical conceptual level. Isn't it interesting to read a magazine article on the weekends, but how does this come into an impact? Or how should it come in and impact leaders, particularly in the business space, but also potentially in the political sphere? This is a very broad question. I understand, but as my work is primarily in the corporate world, not entirely with leaders at various levels, including very high level leaders in the business world trying to execute on strategy to make profit, try to balance the needs of sustainability with the needs of quarterly earnings, which is the big bugaboo that people talk about, and the reality of many businesses. I'm not here to vilify that, but just to acknowledge and recognize. So I'm curious to know your thoughts about the balance that leaders walk between honoring their needs and of sustainability, the imperative of sustainability broadly defined with their day jobs not to mention supporting the people who are in their organizations for whom they provide work and vision and et cetera. Where would you go with that?
Bond Snodgrass: That's a great question. The answer is that part of the answer first off is that I personally believe in progress. If you've done nothing today and you've done a little bit, tomorrow you've made progress. Even though, if you were to map out the entirety of the should, it should be like this or the should maybe we're falling short, but we've made progress. So I'm a believer in taking steps towards progress. Now, a simple commitment by the CEO to think about these issues is progress now, because suddenly should, if the CEO suddenly says, oh this makes sense. I need to think about this and realize the business benefit of doing so now, because sustainability companies tend to have lower employee turnover. They're more innovative when there's a commitment to sustainability because employees feel like they're a part of something, right? They feel like their voice counts. And so if you are working with a CEO, if he or she makes a commitment, then that's progress, right? Now what that commitment looks like and the CEO actually decides to execute. There's a huge menu of possibilities. I will say, if you go right now and look at pretty much every single publicly listed company in the United States, definitely in Europe and in capital markets all over the world. Some huge percentage. I'm gonna say above 90% have a sustainability report now in their financial statements, none of their financial statements, these are, this is sustainability reporting, so it's complimentary to financial statements. But they have sustainability reports or ESG reports. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. It's a manifestation of sustainability In the corporate world, the overarching theme is sustainability, and then sustainability has a lot of ways, a lot of paths towards implementation. And one of the paths towards implementation has been this movement called ESG, Environmental Social and Governance. So most publicly traded companies, not in the United States, have an ESG report, and they do it voluntarily because there is no regulation right now in the United States that requires companies to do an ESG report. So why have companies decided to do this? Because investors ask for it and a lot of times consumers as well. So if a consumer, especially Gen Z, the younger Gen Z and even Millennials in particular want their companies to show some kind of commitment to sustainability. So investors are concerned about it, and there's an organization called the PRI, the Principles for Responsible Investment which operates in the UN and some huge amount of global asset managers have signed up for the PRI, the principles responsible investment. And this includes ESG elements as you analyze companies, right? Suddenly investors are asking corporates what is your ESG policy and the corporate say, oh, if the market cares about this, I better care about it. So that's been the way that it manifested and it happened fast. It's been really fast. I would say, sustainability as we're talking about it now, Andrew, it's a very 21st century phenomenon. If you go back into the 20th century, there was some talk of it, like corporate social responsibility, Ben and Jerry's, all those companies. And if you go back even further, it manifests in the form of philanthropy but philanthropy and sustainability are not the same thing. But in the 21st century, it's really taken off. Now it's really been a phenomenon. And ESG, for example, among investors is an asset class ESG labeled mutual funds and ETFs and exchange traded funds so forth has just exploded. I'm not exaggerating, I say it's probably over a trillion dollars in money that is in ESG labeled funds for those that follow these things. There's been some pushback among politicians, among certain politicians when an ESG mandate has taken an exclusionary approach, right? Because there's different ways to implement sustainable investing. And one of them is an exclusion basis. And so you may have heard that there are some funds that most, the classics are, for example gambling stocks or marijuana.
Andrew Cohn: Exclusionary, meaning thou shalt not invest in XI.
Bond Snodgrass: Exclusionary meaning thou should not invest in X. Okay. And that is one approach to sustainable investing. And so politicians that are supportive of fossil fuel companies took umbrage at that. I injected that and said, Hey, wait a minute here. This is oil and gas in the sustainability world. Oil and gas is not demonized at all. They're called hard to abate sectors. They're called hard debates and sustainability is about what we can do with what there is. It's not about value judgments, it's about what, how do you engage in best practice matters? 'Cause the world needs oil and gas. I'm sorry, but it does, we're not there yet. So anyway, there's been some umbrage in certain politics, among certain types of certain politicians that said wait, this means it's gonna be oil and gas. I'm against it. So there was a lot of pushback in ESG, but that's fine. You just have to adapt. And I say no what we mean is we're talking about measurement, we're talking about risk management. We're talking about helping hard debate sectors do the best that they can with what they have, it's et cetera. I'm getting a little bit distracted. The point I wanna make is that you asked, is this a lonely road or is there a lot of company? And that's just, there's a lot of company. This has become an industry now this has become a new way of doing business. And it's been, it's happened so fast and I think it's wonderful and it happened fast. And that's good. I don't wanna use, I don't like to use judgment words. It's been phenomenal to watch, but it's also come with some complications. And I'll tell you what, one of them has been in the sustainability space, because this is also new, there have been a lot of players I shouldn't use the word players, a lot of well-intentioned organizations because player implies it has a negative connotation, play with gambling and so forth. A lot of organizations have stepped into this space to try to put some order into it, right?
Andrew Cohn: A lot of actors in the space, perhaps actors in the space right?
Bond Snodgrass: I don't wanna get into the whole alphabet soup, but there's the Sustainable economy, the standards board, there's the Global Reporting Initiative, there's the International Sustainability Standards Board. There's a lot of organizations. There's the TCFD. It's an alphabet soup of organizations that have gotten to this. So if you're a corporation, the point is there, there has, there's no generally there's no common framework that can apply, right? It's still voluntary and there's a lot of alternatives about how to apply it. So for the corporate, even though you may wanna do good and get involved and be a more sustainable company, you look at the ecosystem and you say, do I do this one, do I choose this one? Do I choose A? Do I choose B? Do I choose C? Do I choose D? And investors are saying just choose one of them. Do something. And so it becomes confusing and maybe a little bit frustrating for the corporate because when it's financial accounting, you know what, there's a gap in the United States.
Andrew Cohn: one standard, right?
Bond Snodgrass: Everybody uses GAP in the US or IFRS in the rest of the world, in most of the rest of the world, right? You know what, it's the same standard for every single company in the market, and it's not like that in sustainability. So that's been another source of tension, frustration. However, we're not alone in this. There's been a lot of wonderful work in this space.
Andrew Cohn: So what I'm hearing is one of the consequences of the rush into the space from different actors, perhaps from different spheres and spaces and intentions, and maybe even values that may differ from some of them. It makes it difficult for a corporation to say, okay, we know what the right thing to do is because there's one loud, singular, coherent voice. When does that happen in our world anymore? Probably not too often, but there's one loud, coherent single voice. That's what we're going with. That's what we wanna abide by. But that's more difficult as a result of the flood of participants in the space, which is a consequence of the fast growth of the movement. Perhaps
Bond Snodgrass: You said it perfectly. Thank you.
Andrew Cohn: And what would you say, and this is another broad question, but this is such a broad topic, but how would you speak with business leaders who would say it's not realistic? We're gonna lose money and or be, it's difficult to be compliant with something that doesn't have a clear single voice. Perhaps compliance isn't even the right word, but maybe aligned with something that way. But what are your major responses, which I'm sure you speak about a lot to those who push back and say, this is a social initiative, this is a weekend initiative. This doesn't really help business. This is gonna cost us in the long term.
Bond Snodgrass: That's another great question. If somebody definitely does not wanna hear about it, then there's no need to have that conversation, because do you know what it's voluntary and if you feel it, that's fine. Okay, that's, I'm not gonna judge you. I'm not gonna, that's absolutely fine. Go ahead.
Andrew Cohn: So you're not an, you're not an evangelist.
Bond Snodgrass: I'm not an evangelist, exactly. So if somebody comes to me and says sustainability is, it's not worth it. It's gonna cost us money. It's a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's a pain in my rear end or whatever. I've got much higher priorities than this, than I say, Okay that's fine. No, and that's fine. There's nothing about it because it is still in many jurisdictions it's still a voluntary initiative, Andrew. Except in Europe. In Europe it's highly regulated. In Europe, everybody has to do it. And the number of companies, the level, in other words in terms of revenue, a million dollars a year is descending. In other words, they're getting, there's still, it's not at the small and mid-size company business level, but it is the, there's a lot of regulations that say you have to be involved with this. In Europe, it is regulatory, but not in the United States. Not Latin America. And not in other jurisdictions. So if a corporate leader says to me, you know what you just said I'm not gonna do this, that's fine. If a corporate leader says why should I do this? What is in it for me? That's a different question. And then we can have a conversation.
Andrew Cohn: Fair. That conversation would be?
Bond Snodgrass: You would say, some of the points of the studies, what the data is showing and what the data tends to show is that sustainable companies, again, I mentioned on the, social sustainability, allows you to attract talent. No, especially younger talent. They wanna be in a company that is purpose driven, has meaning, and so your company is more desirable as an employer. It makes you more federal as an employer. Thank you.
Andrew Cohn: Got it? Very well. Yep. What else?
Bond Snodgrass: It reduces, it also can reduce costs. And how does that work? If you measure your carbon footprint and your water footprint, you can identify opportunities to reduce your energy expense, particularly in energy intensive businesses. Another one is you can identify new business opportunities. So I'll just throw out some, like you might have heard of echo tourism, that's something that travel companies green labeled products. So there are companies out there, for example, or certifying organizations that help seafood companies, for example, say that this salmon has been sustainably farmed or Shrimp farm or this, has come from a sustainable aquaculture operation. So that's a label that consumers may find more appealing. And so that would be part of the argument. And then it enhances a company's reputational capital. Capital as well, makes them more attracted to investors, makes them eligible. It can bring down your financing costs, because normally, there are banks that offer sustainable finance products. And what is that? It's sustainability linked credits or bonds if you're a big company, sustainable green bonds, social bonds, sustainability linked bonds, sustainability linked credits. And if you have a sustainable program, sustainability, corporate sustainability program in the entity than your banks and your sources of financing can give you a preferential rate, a lower interest rate and so forth, because you're a less risky credit because you've taken all these measures to strengthen the company. So these would be some of the benefits. I don't know if I answered well or not.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, definitely. So in that last one. That's interesting. So there's even a competitive advantage financially in terms of credit markets to be playing in some of these spaces.
Bond Snodgrass: It's a vertical approach to finance called sustainable finance.
Andrew Cohn: And where you were talking about some of these agencies that do green labeling or otherwise ways to meet certain levels of accomplishment in the sustainability space broadly where does that tend to be? You mentioned Europe, for example, you're in Mexico City today. Is it different in Mexico City as compared to the US or maybe that's, it's so fuzzy. I'm sure you have an opinion on that.
Bond Snodgrass: For big companies, for companies that access capital markets, your investment bank will definitely offer you the chance to issue a green bond or a sustainability linked bond or a social bond. Usually these are associated with managers, the use of resources. So for example, you can issue a blue bond if you're gonna invest the money in, let's say a water treatment plant, right? Or a green bond. If you're gonna invest the money in, let's say, a solar panel field. In other words, if the use of proceeds are clearly linked to an environmental or social project, then you can call it a green bond. Or a sustainability linked bond or a social bond and issue that on capital markets, right? And these are called labeled credits. There's also something called linked sustainability linked credits. And in the bank credit market, what you can do is you can go to the issuer of the borrower and you can say to the borrower look, if you meet certain social metrics, then I'll give you a more favorable interest rate. In other words, you can use the money for whatever you want, working capital, what have you. But if you so let's say that, I'm gonna give you this credit of $10 million, and after one year you'll show to me that you've measured your carbon footprint. Let's say, you've measured your carbon footprint, then I will step down your interest rate by five basis points or something like that. That's called sustainability linked. And at the end of the time, the borrower says, yeah, I measure my carbon footprint and I also took these measures to lower my fiber carbon footprint. Then that's linked to actions taken by the borrower as opposed to funds to finance a project, a specific project. Did I explain that right?
Andrew Cohn: Absolutely. It sounds like that's more an incentive to move more towards more sustainable operations, which becomes more attractive financially. And I might liken it to, a food store that says we're gonna just stock a certain number of organic products because it makes us more appealing to the customer, for customers to know and then of course, you track the people buying the stuff.
Bond Snodgrass: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Cohn: So in terms of tracking, what is the trend in your view, if you were to, you are sitting in your perch, in Mexico City. It's five years from now. We are in a bit of a troubled time in terms of global economics and certainly the value of sustainability within certain political systems, many of whom shall, may nameless at this point. But what do you envision as the trend and the track? Will it continue to grow as it has been growing? And if not, what do you see as the big challenges? Again, I know it's a big question, but what do you think?
Bond Snodgrass: The short answer is? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out.
I'm open-minded. I'm open-minded, because the growth in sustainability and corporate sustainability, the underlying logic is pretty sound. And it's also something that the market wants, right? There consumers want this, consumers are concerned about it. That dynamic's not gonna change. I think that's what I don't wanna say, because it's such a big space and by no means am I a spokesman for anybody. But if I was to advise, I would say, you know what? ESG, take the feedback. Seriously, listen. Do you know what I mean? And try to separate where there might be some lessons learned here too, because, for example, the pain point I just mentioned of corporates that want to implement sustainability practices but have limited resources. And by limited resources, usually, in your reporting, financial reporting team, you've got your treasurer, you've got a few accountants, right?
If you add to their burden. That's uncomfortable, that's not helpful. If you're gonna, say, look, I want you to do this, and your metric is, A, B, C, and D, then they can, okay, I can handle it, I'll take you. But if there's moving metrics then, and if the metrics are unclear, then that causes frustration and inefficiency.
Andrew Cohn: Absolutely.
Bond Snodgrass: Exactly right. So I would say, listen to the market feedback, listen to the market, take a pause and see what can we do to make this better? Because in many cases it's just data. Do you know what I mean? It's just data. In other words, a lot of ESG and climate measurement. And so forth. It's not a judgment call, it's just information about what a company is doing. And so I think what might've caught a lot of people in the sustainability space off guard is when part of it was being, when that, when the pushback was political and people were saying that's not really what we meant.
We didn't mean that. What we meant is we wanna provide more information to help investors make better decisions and help managers manage risks better. But it didn't become, maybe the communication there was a problem with communicating to the market, right? So if there's a way to, to take a pause and say, look, all that the ESG movement is doing is providing additional information to make good investment decisions and help risk managers manage risk better, and that's a good thing. That's helping people meet their fiduciary duty. That's helping capital owners make better decisions, make more and well-informed decisions. If we can get to that point, then I think that the pushback will evaporate right again. There's this issue of, one of the ways of becoming, of implementing sustainable investment or impact investment or what have you, is by ex the exclusion method. And I think that, maybe the no fossil fuels approach, although I understand. What climate activists are concerned about, obviously. But on the other hand, fossil fuel companies are still a big part of the local economy and so forth and we need them. I think that's why it might have been interpreted as something hostile as opposed to something that's potentially beneficial for the entire energy spectrum.
So I can understand that as well. So I'm very curious to see where it's gonna go over the next four years. I think that for example, sustainability has also resulted in a lot of jobs, right? There's the inflation reduction act. Most of that money was spent in what are called red states. If you look at the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and where a lot of these electric vehicle money's been spent, it's been spent in red states. So a lot of jobs and factories were put up in these red states. So I'd be very curious to see what happens when that bubbles to the surface that there's been a lot of economic benefit to a lot of Americans by the sustainability movement. So I'll be very interested to see how that conversation goes once that comes back into the limelight.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, absolutely. I wanna be sure to reserve a few minutes here for you to talk a little bit about Awakened Economics. And for me it feels connected to what we're talking about in the sense, if I'm not missing something here, but in the sense that as businesses start to think that it's more than just about profits, they are certainly short-term profits. We're playing a bigger game here, and we begin to question the priorities of business and expand them, if you will. That's how I hear this topic. But then how do we bring that over to even theories of economics and this notion of, can we question neoclassical economics and what does that mean? I know that's something that's near and dear to your heart with your Awakened Economics column and, but tell me, tell us a little bit about that, please.
Bond Snodgrass: The Awakened Economics is the, let's say the antagonist is not business. It's the way young students are taught economics today. It's with theoretical economics, that's where if I had to choose an antagonist, what I'm looking to call attention to is that the way theoretical economics is taught, and by the way there could be a big disconnect between the business world and theoretical and theoretical economics. A huge disconnect. There are two, they could be two different things especially in theoretical economics, which kind of tends to be in its own little class bubble sometimes. But nonetheless, impressionable students are taught year in and year out. To this day, right now, even as we speak, a theory of economics called the Neoclassical approach. And the Neoclassical approach I read in the blog I chase out the whole history of it there, but it's underpinning, its theoretical underpinnings are self-interest and maximization. That, and the idea is that you've heard this before, that it's supposedly, it's Adam Smith's invisible hand, right? That people interacting in a free market, pursuing their own self-interests have a positive societal benefit as a result, right? So if you let people interact freely in the market pursuing their self-interest, and if you let companies interact freely in the market, pursuing their self-interest, society as a whole is going to benefit, right? And so that's the intellectual underpinning, right? But clearly that's not happened. There's really, the idea of a free market is, does it, you can wonder whether or not it really exists, right? Because you may have people involved in relationships with buying and selling, but what happens when, you know there's.m how relationships get involved in that. It is an idealistic view. I don't think it reflects reality. It is because I say that if you teach kids that self-interest and maximization have to be the underpinnings of economic relationships, then what is the outcome of that? The outcome of that is, I see a straight line. Unbridled self-interest, pursuit of unbridled self-interest and these huge disparities of wealth and opportunity that characterize the global economy. And today, and maximization, same thing. It leads to huge disparities of wealth and opportunity, and I don't think that's healthy and the climate crisis is destroying the planet. And so I don't, I say, why are we teaching this? Why do we continue to teach this model? And there's a whole series of rationalizations. Economists tell you no, that's just theory. It's not a theory. You, okay? Why don't you change the assumption? Why don't you change your inputs? And in Awakened Economics, that's where we turn to spirituality and we say instead of having the core of your economic theory be a utility maximizing self-interest individual or a profit maximizing self-interested company, why don't you, why doesn't start point be a fully conscious human being? Why can't the start point be somebody that's fully conscious and that cares as much about the wellbeing of his or her neighbor? Has a sense of empathy, compassion, generosity, tolerance, and have that be the start point instead of having the start point be self-interested, utility maximizing consumer, which is a start point in neoclassical economics, right? So that's the theme that I'm developing over the course of all the writing in Awakened Economics, right? So that's it. Between that, and I haven't in the blog so far in the column so far, haven't talked about the business world in my definition of economics. Economics is funny because there's no commonly agreed upon definition to economics. Right now, if you ask economists what does economics mean? And if you ask them that in the 1950s versus today versus the time of Adam Smith the definition has changed and changed, right?
So we have an awakened version of an awakened definition of economics that we propose. Gimme one second here. I'm gonna raise my hand for the first time. Let me just because I wanna read this definition that we propose. For an awakened definition of economics. So at Awakened economics, I was saying that the definition of economics is malleable. And so if you ask economists today, what is economics, they won't give you the same answer one to the other. Right now, the definition that students are taught is it's the way we allocate scarce resources, right? And I have problems with that definition because it leads into this idea of what is scarcity? Things are scarce only if you have infinite wants and desires. And in neo-classical economics, the major theoretical approach that's taught students today leads to this idea that there's infinite wants and desires. And it doesn't have to be that way, especially if you take a more of a spiritual approach.
So the definition of economics, the definition of economics that we propose in the blog is Economics of this study of interdependent relationships of material transformation and service for the attainment of sustainable human and planetary wellbeing. I know it's a little bit long and I'll repeat it. Economics of the study of interdependent relationships of material transformation and service for the attainment of sustainable human and planetary wellbeing.
So you see the word sustainability, it's in there, right? And each of those words is very carefully chosen and the unpacking of the definition is available in the blog. I have a couple of posts called What is Economics and Awakened Definition, part one and part two. So Wellbeing as opposed to utility maximization. We include both human beings and the planet in the definition. And rather than, buyers and sellers are reducing, consumers trying to maximize their utility. We talk about economic relationships, right? And that these are interdependent, right? So if I make a decision to pollute a stream. Maybe I'm maximizing profits, but I'm also having a negative impact on the environment in which I operate. And those are the kind of questions and considerations that I wanna encourage theoretical economists to to take into account. And they do, economics is theoretical or academic economics. It's a huge ecosystem as well. It's a huge undertaking. I'm always very careful to make this clear, I'm not picking a fight with all of economics. That would be silly. And I've run across amazing economists too, that feel the same way and are looking for alternatives to teach kids now. And if you ask young economic students they're not turned on by the Neoclassical approach either yet. It continues to be taught and it continues to be taught. It continues to be taught, right?
So that's what I talk about in Awakened Economics, so I've got my startup sustainability and my commitment to sustainability on the one side. That's in the real world, the practical world, the business world and then I've got Awakened Economics in which I try to contribute to the conversation about academic economics and what we can do to get to a healthier, more holistic approach to that craft too.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. So if someone wanted to learn more about the sustainability book would be sustainarray.com, correct?
Bond Snodgrass: Yes. Sustainarray.com. Okay. And if someone wants to learn more about Awakened Economics, it's Awakened Economics on Substack or is there a more direct way or what's the best?
Bond Snodgrass: It's long. It's awakened economics dash substack.com. But if you Google it, it'll come up.
Andrew Cohn: Got it. No. Beautiful. Got it. And I really hear, I appreciate your work on these various fronts. And I think what it circles back to for me is this notion of, do I want to be behaving in a world in a way that reflects some level of spiritual awareness, awakening, et cetera? Or do I wanna be operating in a world where something like that just would never even occur to me and I wouldn't aspire to it?
Andrew Cohn: It's a bit about what you talked about at the beginning, right? We're free to choose. That's totally fine. And that's as we always are in this world with respect to anything quote unquote spiritual. And that's the beauty of it from my point of view. It's always a choice.
Bond Snodgrass: It's always a choice. How we engage in so much a value in this life is always a choice. It's always a choice. And we're free human beings. Each one of us is worth the freedom, dignity, worth as the next person. So it's up to you. It's your journey. I respect the journey of every single person, every listener, every—and it's up to you. And so all we do is try to contribute to the conversation and follow our own passions. And hopefully, contribute something positive to the world and along the way.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you, Bond. I hear you doing that. I see you doing that. I look forward to continuing to read your columns and go, oh, that's right. I remember some of this econ stuff from undergrad. I'm happy to learn about it again, and I appreciate the voice that you have in the world and also the opportunities that you're taking to share that voice. So thank you so much for your time and for your expertise and wisdom and the invitation that you present.
Bond Snodgrass: Thank you very much. I'm very grateful. This, I must say, is the first time I've ever been on a podcast, so this is really exciting. Thank you for something brand new for me, deeply grateful.
Andrew Cohn: Lovely.I'm grateful for the experience. Doesn't sound like it's new. So good. Great to speak with you.
Bond Snodgrass: Okay, likewise. Have a good day. Bye-bye.
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