This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Seminar on Conscious Investing with the International Institute of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. See https://youtu.be/c05OpNkR9Rk via @YouTube

WASHINGTON  -  April 27, 2020  -  PRLog  -- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today posted a "Friend of the Court" brief filed by William Michael Cunningham in Profiles, Inc. v. Bank of America Corporation. The case, 20-cv-1438, requests an injunction to stop Bank of America from limiting Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applications. According to news reports, "Bank of America initially would only accept paycheck protection loan applications from small business clients that were active borrowers at the bank." Our brief explains why the bank would impose such restrictive and limiting conditions on the allocation of public funds in the middle of a national crisis. We include data from our new national survey of small businesses launched on Thursday, April 23rd  on the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance (EIDL) Program. The survey is intended to get a true picture of how effective the lending programs ha

Black American Business Owners Sound Off in New Survey of PPP  by Jeffrey McKinney, Black Enterprise Magazine April 24, 2020 Financing from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is getting a cool reception from black business owners. A new national survey of 50 small businesses conducted Thursday by Washington, D.C.-based Creative Investment Research on the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Emergency Advance (EIDL) Program was intended to get a true pulse of how effective the lending programs have been. The survey came out the same day the House rati􀁽ed a bill by the Senate to pump roughly $310 billion more in loans to the Paycheck Protection Program, The Wall Street Journal reports. The PPP exhausted its initial $350 billion funding last week after being rolled out on April 3. The program for 􀁽rms with up to 500 workers became law in late March as part of the $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus package. It was geared to help

Today's addendum to the CARES Act includes the following: Section 101 provides amendments to the Paycheck Protection Program and to the Economic Injury Disaster Loans, and Emergency Grants. The agreement increases the authorization level for the Paycheck Protection Program from $349 billion to $659 billion , and increases the authorization level for the Emergency Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) Grants from $10 billion to $20 billion . See our video on the EIDL Program: https://youtu.be/SzwQp11n-YQ   (As we said in the video, you will want to document your EIDL and PPP applications. We still feel this program will have a hard time reaching women, Black, Hispanic and Asian small businesses. It has also been shown to provide more loans to red states than blue .) The law also creates a set-aside for Insured Depository Institutions, Credit Unions, and Community Financial Institutions for the Paycheck Protection Program. It defines Community Financial Institutions as minority

A sking "mainstream" economists about reopening the economy in the face of the current crisis is unlikely to generate useful advice. These are the same people who missed the 2008 financial crisis (page 6, top) and were unable to predict the election of Donald Trump in 2016. An independent view on the economic impacts of the Coronavirus, informed by relevant insight from American history – in this case, Black Wall Street/Tulsa, Oklahoma, may better explain the exact nature of the problem the country now faces. The Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the most prominent concentrations of African-American businesses in the United States. It was razed to the ground in the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, in which white residents massacred as many as 300 black residents, injuring hundreds more. Our analysis starts by comparing the economic devastation wrought by this incident to that of the coronavirus, since, like the virus, business properties were rendered uni

Four months ago, our nation was made host to a virulent, deadly visitor, brought to this continent surreptitiously. A new virus, uncovered in China, unsparing in occurrence. Now we are engaged in a great experiment, testing whether any nation with significant divisions based on politics, race and wealth, can survive in the face of such a disease. We have come to give our testimony while we still can, to help insure the survival of all who participate in this society. We are writing not as millionaires but as common people, like the medical and public safety workers who gave their lives that this nation might live. As citizens of the world, we have an obligation to speak out. As citizens of the US, we have the right to do so. We offer an independent view on the economic impacts, having gained relevant insight from American history – in this case, from Black Wall Street/Tulsa, Oklahoma, to better understand the exact nature of the economic problem the country now faces. Of course, i