If only the widespread progressive movement that has taken over our college campuses and the mainstream press would stay out of our pocketbooks!
If only the University of Massachusetts’ decision to sell its investments in fossil fuel holdings was part of a fringe movement. Trouble is divestment movements and activist socially responsible investing movements are mainstream and are attacking the very industries that make America great.
We’re talking about industries that support our energy independence, Second Amendment rights, agriculture independence, and free enterprise.
If we think socially responsible investing is a fringe movement, it’s time to think again. Socially responsible and other forms of impact investing now influences $6.57 trillion, or one in six professionally managed dollars, in America. The United Nations has cajoled the managers of $59 trillion, or half of global capital, into signing their “Principals for Responsible Investing.”
Lots of this is your money, and you may not know that the bank where you hold your deposits or your pension manager may have decided to divest of companies you value.
The bottom line is this is a dirty business – big institutions have co-opted your money and are using it to their lofty progressive ends that are damaging to our national and personal freedoms.
It’s one thing when the press and college campus rhapsodize about the merits of an unsustainable belief system, it’s quite another when capital markets actors redline critical industries because of a bias. This is nothing short of economic jihad, and it needs to be stopped.
Jeffrey M. McClure is the CEO of Freedom Capital Investment Management, the first American Impact investment fund