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Source: http://www.social-bookmarking.net/bookmarks/weatherford%E2%80%99s-painting-home-improvement-offers-great-services-in-centennial-co/

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Where SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) Doesn't Work

The following is part of a series by our friends at?CSRHub?(a 3p sponsor) ? offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over?6,500 of the world?s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 25% off CSRHub?s?professional subscriptions?with promo code ?TP25.??

As previously seen on the CSRHub blog.

By Carol Pierson Holding

In December, at Seattle?s?Newground Social Investment?holiday party, the firm?s Founder Bruce Herbert, a leader in SRI, gave a toast in which he applauded?Bill McKibben?s?leadership in fossil fuel divestiture. Herbert asked the crowd to support McKibben?s efforts, both in attending events (Herbert attended McKibben?s Do The Math divestiture launch) and in our investment practices.

At first, I was thrilled. I wondered if the Do The Math campaign had already spread beyond college campuses to the broader SRI investment community. If so, the movement was spreading even faster than I could have hoped.

Four days later, in Newtown Connecticut, a 20-year-old gunman trained a semi-automatic gun on a 2^nd?grade classroom, killing 20 small children and 6 adults. In the midst of writing about fossil fuel divestiture, I realized there was something bigger going on: despite all the successes the SRI industry can claim, it has been a failure when it comes to products that kill.

SRI was first practiced by religious groups who refused to invest their money in companies whose products were harmful to their congregations, mostly alcohol, tobacco and gambling. These ?sin? screens have been in place for at least?sixty years. Later, other screens were commonly added for harmful industries such as?pornography, weapons and the military. But none of these industries has been seriously affected by SRI.

This is not to undercut the work that SRI has done. Over the years, it has played an important role in anti-war, anti-nuclear, environmental movements, civil rights and economic justice, including, most famously, apartheid.

But as Robert Zevin, an early SRI advocate, says in a?blog for?Huffington Post, SRI?s original moral purpose has been subsumed to profit:

?Many of us are now embarrassed to say that our religious or moral or political views should and do affect our investment selections. We know the gatekeepers don?t want to hear it; and they know that many of their institutional clients definitely don?t want to hear it.?

And investors have even less influence when they simply refuse to invest. The old guard of SRI would hold stocks just to give them a seat at the table ? or rather, at the annual corporate meeting. Now, even investors as socially minded as the Gates Foundation are interested in only one thing: returns. That foundation may do worlds of good for global health, but its?biggest investments?after Berkshire Hathaway are in McDonald?s and Coca Cola, two companies most at odds with children?s health.

At least sixty years of investors boycotting the gun trade has yielded zero?results. In fact, SRI activism works best when rewarding companies that care about being good, whose products sustain life rather than take it. For example,?CSRHub, the social responsibility data aggregator, created a?special issue called ?NRA Anti-Gun List??so that CSR executives can support companies that take a stand against guns, rather than providing a list of gun manufacturers and dealers to boycott.

Only new regulations prompted by consumer outrage will restrict guns. I fear the same is true for climate change. Noble a thought as it is ? and as much as we all love having an outlet for our outrage ? the truth is, divestiture itself will have as little effect as investment screens for guns. But the moral outrage that the campaign is sparking, like the moral outrage sparked by the massacre in Newtown, is a different story. I look forward to restrictions and even bans being enacted at all levels of government on both guns and fossil fuels. Investors and consumers can take care of keeping the responsible companies in line. I am thankful we have other means to handcuff the really bad businesses.

[image credit: Patrick Feller: Flickr cc]

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Carol Pierson Holding writes on environmental issues and social responsibility for policy and news publications, including the Carnegie Council?s Policy Innovations, Harvard Business Review, San Francisco Chronicle, India Time, The Huffington Post and many other web sites. Her articles on corporate social responsibility can be found on?CSRHub.com, a website that provides sustainability ratings data on 6,500 companies worldwide. Carol holds degrees from Smith College and Harvard University.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on nearly 6,500 companies from 135 industries in 70 countries. By aggregating and normalizing the information from over 185 data sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that linksmillions of rating elements back to their source. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub tobenchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

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Source: http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/01/socially-responsible-investing/

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Markets rally after US 'fiscal cliff' deal

LONDON (AP) ? Markets breathed a huge sigh of relief Wednesday after U.S. lawmakers reached a budget agreement that will stop hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts that risked plunging the world's biggest economy into recession.

Stocks around the world started 2013 with hefty gains as investors welcomed the vote in the House of Representatives that made sure the U.S. does not go over the so-called "fiscal cliff." Though longer-term fiscal problems remain and President Barack Obama will likely face more battles with the Republican-dominated House, investors were relieved that the biggest near-term stumbling block to the world economy has been cleared.

"The degree to which the U.S. fiscal cliff was causing investors to repress risk appetite is all too clear on the first trading day of 2013," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average spiked around 250 points, or 1.9 percent, to 13,349, while the broader S&P 500 index rose 1.9 percent too to 1,453.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 2.2 percent to 6,027.37, its first foray above the 6,000 mark since July 2011. The CAC-40 in France rose 2.6 percent to 3,733.93 while Germany's DAX ended 2.2 percent higher at 7,778.68.

Earlier, in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index shot up 2.9 percent to close at 23,311.89, its highest finish since June 1, 2011. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 surged 1.2 percent to close at 4,705.90, its best finish in 19 months while South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.7 percent to 2,031.10. Japanese and Chinese markets were closed for public holidays.

The bill that Congress approved calls for higher taxes on income over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples, a victory for Obama. Earnings above those amounts would be taxed at a rate of 39.6 percent, up from the current 35 percent. It also delays for two months $109 billion worth of across-the-board spending cuts that had been set to start affecting the Pentagon and domestic agencies this week.

If lawmakers had not agreed by the Jan. 1, 2013 deadline on the new budget measures, more than $500 billion in tax increases would have hit the economy in 2013 alone. Government spending worth $109 billion would have been cut from the military and domestic spending programs.

Though fears over an imminent fall off the "fiscal cliff" have eased, investors still have a host of issues to worry about. The next possible point of contention will be in two months' time, when U.S. politicians will debate the debt ceiling and spending cuts that did not make it into the latest deal.

"No agreement would mean a technical default on U.S. debt in March," said Michael Ingram, market analyst at BGC Brokers. "The U.S. bond market would go into cardiac arrest."

Investors will also keep a close watch on any response from the credit rating agencies. After a fight in Congress to raise the debt limit in 2011, Standard & Poor's lowered the U.S. government's AAA bond rating, citing the lack of a credible plan to reduce the federal government's debt. It also voiced its concerns about the "effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking."

Meanwhile, investors will be monitoring the state of the global economic recovery and Europe's ongoing battle to contain its 3-year debt crisis.

A better than expected monthly U.S. manufacturing survey from the Institute for Supply Management reinforced the underlying optimism in the markets, especially as investors shift their focus to Friday's payrolls report for December.

The ISM's index of manufacturing activity rose to 50.7 in December from 49.5 in the previous month. The rise was slightly more than expected in the markets and took the measure above the 50 threshold that indicates expansion.

"Nothing to dent the positive risk start to the year here," said Alan Ruskin, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.

While the evidence points to continued economic growth in the U.S., figures elsewhere highlighted the scale of the downturn in the economy of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro.

The manufacturing purchasing managers' index ? a gauge of business activity published by data provider Markit ? showed the eurozone's industrial sector remained mired in recession in December. The index fell to 46.1 from 46.3 the previous month. Anything below 50 indicates a contraction in activity.

How the European economy fares over the coming months will likely hinge on developments in the debt crisis. In the last few months of 2012, tensions eased largely in the wake of the announcement of a new bond-buying plan from the European Central Bank.

That has shored up the euro, which on Wednesday was down 0.1 percent at $1.3192, having earlier traded as much as 0.5 percent higher on the day.

Oil prices pushed higher, with the benchmark New York contract up $1.26 at $92.96 a barrel.

____

Sampson contributed from Bangkok.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/markets-rally-us-fiscal-cliff-deal-111159565--finance.html

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