This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Why the  #FED  doesn’t care about Black unemployment. EllisonReport 12/22/2015 edition: New shifts in the GOP primary. Emerging differences among Democratic and GOP candidates on national security issues. How the political calculus might reshape (or not) in wake of trial, grand jury decisions. Federal education policy 50 years later. How recent interest rate hikes eviscerate already eviscerated African Americans.   Economist William Cunningham (@CreativeInv) talks about how the Fed doesn’t care about Black unemployment – but, has many tools at its disposal to take care of it.  Listen at:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/11yR9RGTdY5ccp5PyEhbjkRqgiKQJm34-/view?usp=sharing

As the New York Times reported, "Syrian refugees continue to flee the violence at home,  President Obama  is turning to the modern tools of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship as a supplement to the more traditional means of humanitarian relief. At the request of officials from the White House Office of Digital Strategy, the crowdfunding website Kickstarter has begun its first  social service campaign  aimed at raising money for the  United Nations  refugee agency on behalf of Syrian refugees." Here is my talk 10/7 on NPR's  Press Play with Madeleine Brand: " Host Madeleine Brand looks at news, culture and emerging trends through the lens of Los Angeles, weekdays at noon." http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand How effective is this? They raised $700,000 in six hours. Six hours. For more, visit the links below.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/ 10/07/world/middleeast/obama- turns-to-crowdfun...

We note that last week automaker  Volkswagen admitted  that “’defeat devices’ used to cheat emissions testing were installed in 11 million vehicles worldwide.” The admission resulted in the swift “resignation and prompt replacement of CEO Martin Winterkorn, and a 30-percent drop in the company’s stock..” Volkswagen will be removed from the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) as of October 6 (showing, once again, just how unreliable these index measures are).   Some time ago (2011), we  quantified the impact environmental factors have on stock prices  using several statistical techniques. Our analysis showed that investors and publicly traded companies must recognize the impact environmental incidents and issues have on a given firm's ability to use company assets and therefore generate revenue and profits. As we stated on February 5, 2015 in testimony to the  Norwegian Ministry  of Finance and on April 22, 2015 in testimony to the Governmen...

As noted in Testimony to the Council of the District of Columbia on Thursday, March 12, 2015:  “Our 2016 Fully Adjusted Return® forecast for the City suggests a crisis may be coming soon in the August/October (2015) timeframe."  (The testimony can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx3S91AlzNJ4RGF0WTZQd05Ha3M/view?usp=sharing and https://youtu.be/rlr_DomOais  below:) One newspaper recently reported a "growing fear that the District is less safe. This fear resides with the City’s gentrifiers, not its natives, since Black male DC natives have been subject to elevated murder risk for decades. The truth is that as long as Blacks are the victims, Washington, DC's murder rate has never been a concern for the DC City Council or their masters, the Congress of the United States, our Constitutionally anointed overseers. Failing to recognize that synthetic drugs, domestic violence, and illegal guns are all factors in the increase in homicides anchors this lac...

I recently gave a talk at the 2015 National Black MBA Association Washington DC Chapter (NBMBAA-DC) Entrepreneurship Expo. My talk, titled “Black People and Venture Capital” available below. I started with a discussion of  the  key financial institution in the country, the Federal Reserve, which controls the allocation of capital via monetary policy, the tools used to control the supply of money. The Fed is located at 20th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W. and I encouraged DC entrepreneurs to visit the institution, since the Fed directly impacts the ability of small businesses to get capital. I also encouraged Black businesses in DC to use the recently established Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion as a powerful potential source of capital and contracts. Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contains a provision creating an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) responsible for monitoring diversity efforts at the age...

We define a financial conflict of interest as a situation in which a person, institution or organization has more than one financial  interest in a particular investment vehicle or asset. The problem occurs when parties whose interests are singular, and thus not compromised, depend upon a conflicted individual or institution for primary advice concerning the purchase, sale or retention of the conflicted financial asset. The conflict "corrupts the motivation of the individual or organization" providing advice.  According to the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, "conflicted retirement investment advice costs investors $17 billion each year," The US Department of Labor recently held a hearing on conflicts of interest in the provision of retirement investment advice. The goal of the hearing was to gather testimony on the  Employee Benefits Security Administration's (EBSA) proposal to reduce conflicts of interest  in the retirement advice marketpl...

Our Fully Adjusted Return (tm) model predicted Black Unemployment would fall from 9.5% in June to 9.1% in July.  The forecast was confirmed this morning by the US Department of Labor - Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The difference between Black and White unemployment now stands at 4.5%. We note this is the second lowest differential of the Obama Presidency, surpassed only by a 4.0% differential in February, 2008. Our Fully Adjusted Return model shows that the difference is poised, assuming the Fed does not raise rates, to fall further. See:  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm