This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

The United States has now crossed a fiscal threshold that once seemed unimaginable: federal debt exceeds $40 trillion .  Reuters reports that approximately $32.3 trillion is debt held by the public , with another roughly $7.8 trillion in intragovernmental holdings . It also reports that federal debt has increased by approximately $11.6 trillion during Donald Trump's two terms to date . For decades, Republican fiscal policy has combined large tax cuts with continued federal spending and then used the resulting deficits to justify demands for reductions in domestic programs. That pattern stretches from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush and Donald Trump. The assertion that Republicans as a whole deliberately want the United States to default cannot be dismissed . Concerns about deliberate default strategies are not imaginary. In May 2023, Donald Trump publicly urged congressional Republicans to allow the United States to default if Democrats did not accept spending cuts. We argue...

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) is a law passed by the 117th United States Congress in August 2022. It "includes a first-time provision that would allow the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices of certain prescription drugs in Medicare and Medicaid. Savings would be generated by requiring drug manufacturers to pay a rebate for drugs whose prices increase faster than inflation under Medicare, and would create several reforms in the Medicare drug program, also known as Part D, including a cap on out-of-pocket drug spending for seniors beginning in 2025. It also extends by three years the expanded and enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credit ahead of planned premium increases set to take effect in 2023." We estimate the impact on the African American community to be significant, on the order of 8% of the total. (For a detailed analysis, email info@creativeinvest.com). The law's climate provisions consist of "subsidies for energy that...