This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

 

Nearly two years on from the Black Lives Matter protests, progress on diversity seems to have slowed In May 2020, a video of George Floyd, who was black, suffocating under the knee of former police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis ignited a national reckoning with America’s history of racism. The ensuing mass protests led corporate leaders from Apple’s Tim Cook to David Solomon of Goldman Sachs to address racism publicly, for the first time. Hundreds of wealthy individuals and companies pledged to donate huge sums to the cause, in the hope of correcting systemic injustices. A tally of public promises compiled by consultants Creative Investment Research (CIR) found that 271 US corporations have pledged $67bn towards racial equity since Floyd’s murder, with funds to be used for everything from overhauling their own internal recruiting and inclusion programmes to investing in communities of colour and donating to civil rights org...

President Joseph Biden nominated two Black economists - Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson - to serve on the seven-member governing board of the Federal Reserve. Currently a professor at Michigan State University, Ms. Cook was a senior economist in the Obama administration. Her research centers on African American innovation. Mr. Jefferson is a poverty researcher and professor at Davidson College. These appointments are significant in several ways. Not only is this the first time two African Americans will be nominated at the same time, but, with the simultaneous nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin, if all are confirmed, women would constitute the majority of Federal Reserve Board members. This is truly unprecedented . The nominations come at a critical time. Inflationary pressures have increased, due mainly to a rise in corporate profits driven by a desire to lower business risk in the face of pandemic-induced uncertainty. In December, 2021, the Fed announced that it expects to curtail “its...

One of the key myths concerning cryptocurrency is the claim that these new forms of money will increase financial inclusion by making financial services more broadly available to poor and low-income consumers. This is an unproven assertion at best, an allegation of dubious veracity, made in all likelihood to obtain regulatory support for cryptocurrencies. No independent, objective data exists to support the inclusion claim with respect to Black people and communities of color. This is the same tactic used to generate regulatory support for subprime lending, and, as with that disaster, it is a myth. While my support for cryptocurrency rests on it’s potential to increase financial inclusion, the fact is that this potential is unproven. Hyperbolic and false statements about financial inclusion make it less likely that this potential will ever be realized. In a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee following their December 8th hearing on digital currencies, I ...