This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Black women die in childbirth at disproportionate rates compared to their white counterparts. Research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) clearly shows that social determinants - access to nutrition, transportation, and healthcare——are crucial factors. With the decision to restrict access to birth control and care, the Supreme Court imposed additional penalties on a selected portion of the US population - Black women. They were added without due process or a trial at the individual level. These elevated risks are clear and undeniable, as explained below. Assume two population groups or sectors. In Sector One, women die in childbirth at the rate of ten per 1,000 live births. In Sector Two, the maternal mortality rate is 100 per 1,000 live births. With the elimination of birth control, there are 2,000 live births in each sector. This implies 20 Sector One deaths and 200 in Sector Two. Amanda Stevenson, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, ...

Wells Fargo will testify several times this month before the House Financial Services Committee, under the leadership of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. And Waters is no radical, despite what right-wing propagandists say . She is an experienced, capable legislator with a solid track record of protecting the public. Yet Waters is also not to be trifled with. Both the independent chairman and lead director at the board of Wells Fargo resigned Monday after Waters called for their resignation. Interestingly, those same two leaders are the only witnesses scheduled to testify at Wednesday’s hearing . (It’s long overdue that the entire board be replaced, as noted in 2018 .) In 2019, Wells Fargo reported net income of $19.5 billion . That was lower than the $22.4 billion the bank earned in 2018, as the cost of litigation started to impact profits. Wells recently agreed to pay regulators an additional $3 billion to cover fines for violating consumer protection laws. The bank has a long and sor...

               On Thursday, June 23, 2022, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell testified before the Committee of Financial Services in the House of Representatives. During this testimony, Powell discussed many of the issues relating to the responsibilities of the FED, largely explaining what role they were currently playing in the role of shaping monetary policy. With the rise of inflation, the federal reserve has decided to utilize the tools that they have access to, by raising interest rates by .75 percent. This is the largest increase in benchmark interest rates in almost 30 years, which shows how seriously the Federal Reserve views the rise in inflation that is currently occurring in the United States. However, during the questioning period of Powell’s testimony, it was clear that the two parties represented on the committee had vastly differing views on the causes of inflation, and what role the Federal Reserve should play in comba...

Blow up the CRA and start from scratch By    William Michael Cunningham June 22, 2022, 9:47 a.m. EDT 2 Min Read The Community Reinvestment Act was enacted in 1977 “to address inequities in access to credit for low- and moderate-income individuals and communities.” The law should be repealed and replaced. Like hanging a crystal chandelier in a lean-to shack, any efforts to revise the law are a waste of time. This especially includes efforts  proposed by the Federal Reserve Board “to strengthen the achievement of the core purpose of the statute, and to adapt to changes in the banking industry, including the expanded role of mobile and online banking.” Percentage of Home Loans Applications Approved, by race, at OneUnited, a Black-owned bank, in 2020 The increase in financial institution-induced harm, including environmental damage, demands a different, more honest and authentic approach in reviewing CRA’s inability to facilitate access to banking services and...

   Transferring assets between generations is a natural part of human evolution. In addition to monetary assets, between generations people pass on their wisdom, knowledge, opportunities, etc. It is a natural phenomenon. Usually, such assets retain or even gain value. For example, women today have more opportunities to make use of their assets than did the generation just before us. Sadly, the environment is an exception. For the first time in recent human history, our environmental assets (air, water, land and a stable, continuously life-supporting environment) may have lost value as they have been transferred from one generation to the next.  In contemporary Western economies, it is normal for generations to pass down debt. For example, between the 1980s and 1990s, the national debt increased from $908 billion to $3.233 trillion. In 2000, the national debt was $5.674 trillion. But this number grew to $13.562 trillion by 2010 and exceeded the debt cap of $30 trillion i...

  Bloomberg Government recently wrapped up an event which discussed everything from the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections to the potential policy goals that will either affect or are affected by the current political environment. The primary focus of the first panel was to forecast what will occur in the mid-terms. The overwhelming consensus of the panel was that 2022 will be a favorable year for Republican candidates on the ballot throughout the country. There are a few key reasons for why this is likely to be the case. The fact that this there is a Democrat currently in the White House, Joe Biden, and a Democratic controlled House and Senate puts the Democrats at an immediate disadvantage for 2022. Historically, the party in power typically suffers losses in the mid-terms, with the presidential party losing an average of 26 seats in the House. Combining this with Biden’s low approval ratings, the rise of inflation, and Republican desires to run on immigration and crime, the Demo...

        There are many problems the world is trying to solve in 2022: the climate crisis, restarting after COVID, inequality, war, just to name a few. We count on our politicians and representatives to make decisions that will not only benefit us today, but will lead to a better, safer, more stable and equal world tomorrow. Here’s the problem: lots of the people in positions of power, with the ability  to make the decisions that will wind up impacting the state of the climate in 30 years will not be around to experience the consequences of their decisions. The choices of past generations may have brought them comfort, profits and convenience , but these decisions also created polluted water and air and unjust social systems that my peers and I must now find a way to correct. Our survival will depend on the ability of my generation to overcome environmental damage resulting from short sighted decisions made by policy makers from earlier generations.  At C...

Picture: Mr. Rosen (left, 2nd from bottom) at the New York Times’s DealBook conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday June 9th. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was among those in conversation with The Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. Picture by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The New York Times. From:  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/09/business/inflation-starbucks-guns-dealbook On Thursday June 9th, the New York Times hosted their first in-person Dealbook event since 2019, and headlines were made. Among the speakers present were interim CEO and former full-time CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and journalists Maggie Haberman and Abby Phillip. However, the speaker at Dealbook that made the most note-worthy comments was Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen. During her half-hour interview, Yellen addressed several issues facing the country including inflation, crypto, ESG, and the likelihood of a recession. When asked about the effect ...

More Fortune 500 companies are located in Texas than in any other state. Texas successfully used low taxes and minimal regulations as bait to recruit companies like Tesla and Oracle. The state promoted these “advantages” in ads highlighting their “free-market” environment and criticizing the "tax and spend policies of liberal leadership" in Democrat-run states. Four million people migrated to Texas over the past ten years. Our economic models predict a reversal, however. State of Texas corporations on the Fortune 1000 list generate $2.2 trillion in revenue, $158 billion in profit. They have a market value of $3.8 trillion and employ 2.5 million people nationwide. We continue to believe this increased corporate presence in Texas imposes a tax on the nation as a whole. Texas allows anyone 21 or older to carry handguns without training or licenses, and maintains lower gun purchase age limits. Beyond the recent abortion bill, which allows people to sue those who "aid and abe...

Whether the issue being discussed is climate change, abortion rights, civil rights, or something else, there is no doubt that corporations can have a major effect on the implementation of policy. There is perhaps no area where this is more apparent than the issue of gun violence and mass shootings. This potential for change exists because of multiple factors. First, hundreds of mass shootings have taken place over the course of the past decade, with little to no action taken to prevent them. At the federal level, gun control legislation has been non-existent since the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 2004. Additionally, action to address this issue has been limited at the state and local level. This is where the power of corporations comes into play. Any company has the power to decide that they no longer want to run their business in a state or city that refuses to comply with safety standards deemed  necessary. The safety standard might refer to gun violence or to...

On May 25th, Special Envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the state of a potential re-entry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. He discussed negotiations taking place between the United States, our allies, and Iran. The talks center around re-entering the deal that former President Trump withdrew from in 2018. While Malley stated that specific details of these negotiations could only be discussed in a classified setting, he reiterated that the Biden administration's willingness to use any diplomatic method to ensure that the government of Iran, which is recognized as the largest example of state sponsored terrorism in the world, would never obtain a nuclear weapon. Malley expressed that while it was the preference of the administration to find a way to re-enter the JPCOA, these talks were “tenuous” at best. He laid the blame for the stalemate on unreasonable demands made by the Iranian government in nego...