Today, there are 50 faith-based mutual funds with $17 billion in assets, up from just a handful of funds with $500 million in assets ten years ago, according to Chicago-based Morningstar Inc.
“Probably the fastest-growing subset of socially responsible funds is religious mutual funds,” says Morningstar analyst David Kathman. “These funds won’t necessarily perform better than their mainstream peers. But they can give peace of mind to those who prefer not to own investments that conflict with their religious beliefs.”
Faith-based funds are not all alike. Companies that support abortion and gay causes, for example, are objectionable to evangelical Christians and Catholics. Muslims, who are forbidden by the Koran to earn interest, won’t invest in financial companies, or in companies with a lot of debt or in bonds. And they avoid companies that deal with pork. Sorry Oscar Mayer.
Fair enough. But what caught my eye was the dramatic differences between the Christian and the Islamic funds...
Unlike most other faith-based funds, The Ave Maria Fund Group, a Catholic values investment company, will invest in gambling, alcohol and arms and defense stocks. But abortion and gay rights are off limits. Ave Maria has five funds with $550 million in assets.
George Schwartz, president of Schwartz Investment Counsel, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the investment advisor of the Ave Marie funds, said that gambling and alcohol are venial sins, not mortal sins. “Alcohol is used in the sacraments of the Mass," he stressed. "There is a Catholic doctrine for just wars and self-defense. Defense and tobacco are not anti-Catholic.”
The Roman Catholic Church does not endorse the fund group. But the fund group’s Catholic advisory board includes Cardinal Adam Joseph Maida of Detroit, Schwartz says. “We don’t try to be all things to all people. We are a fund for conservative Catholics. We don’t invest in abortion, pornography-related companies or companies that contribute to Planned Parenthood.”
That's an investment policy for you: War and booze good. Condom and titty-mag bad. I feel holier already.
Looking at the underlying investments in the funds is also instructive. An Evangelical Christian fund invests in ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil; an Islamic fund invests in Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
So Evangelical Christians profit when oil rises; Muslims gain when high tech prospers. Oil prices are now nearly quadruple what they were in Clinton's second term. Evangelicals win!
No wonder a oil-steeped Texan, bolstered by southern evangelicals, invaded Iraq — and why Iran is such a strong contender for invasion. It was simply to get the price up. Faith-based investing is just another minor but real tributary of the polluted river of Follow-the-Money.
The former CEO of Enron's flailing broadband unit was sentenced today to two years and three months in federal prison for lying about the division's capabilities to Wall Street so analyst buzz would inflate the company's stock price.
Kenneth Rice, once a top Enron trader, also will pay a $50,000 fine and turn over more than $13 million in cash and property to the government as agreed when he pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2004. The property includes a Ferrari, a Colorado vacation home and a platinum, diamond and sapphire necklace and bracelet set he bought for his now ex-wife during his heyday at Enron.
Isn't it interesting that women attached to prominent Republican figures (cf. Wolfowitz) rapidly become exes once the power, the money, or the glory runs out?
Why, you would think that GOP shills who enjoyed such extensive (and expensive!) Enron Mighty Man Training would be better able to keep their women satisfied, even without the platinum, diamond and sapphire necklaces and bracelets:
Mr. [Kenneth] Rice, along with the others, was charged with defrauding the investors while reaping millions of dollars in Enron stock sales. He is the person closest to Mr. Skilling to have been indicted in the continuing government investigation into the collapse of the onetime energy-sector highflier. Mr. Rice, who resigned from Enron before Mr. Skilling left in August 2001, worked with Mr. Skilling for more than a decade and was one of a handful of company officials who accompanied the chief executive on so-called mighty man adventure vacations to Mexico, South America and Australia.
How much more manly than an Enron genius can a man be?
The title comes from a chance meeting I had a few years ago at a yacht show in Florida. I was walking along the docks, marveling at hundreds of giant boats parked in the marina. I had seen plenty of yachts before, but never so many at once. I got to talking with a yacht owner from Texas, and as he looked out over the boats he said: “You look at all these boats and you’d think everyone was making loads of money. It’s like it’s a different country.”
The words stuck with me. The wealthy weren’t just getting wealthier — they were forming their own virtual country. They were wealthier than most nations, with the top 1% controlling $17 trillion in wealth. And they were increasingly building a self-contained world, with its own health-care system (concierge doctors), travel system (private jets, destination clubs) and language. (”Who’s your household manager?”) They had created their own breakaway republic — one I called Richistan.
As a former foreign correspondent, I decided to cover Richistan just as I would cover another country. I wouldn’t judge the rich as heroes or villains, any more than I would judge Indonesians when covering Indonesia. My job would simply be to tell the reader what their world is like and what’s happening there.
How much more blithe could the self-definition of his job be? I wonder how long Mr. Frank will be able to maintain his air of bemused amorality when members of his non-rich family and the non-rich community are no longer able to seek respite from their non-rich health-care system (inefficient and expensive to the point of dysfunction), non-rich travel system (bicycles, buses, walking) and non-rich language ("Oh boy! Peanut butter's on sale!").
It could hardly be clearer that the globalized world is in a civil war — a class war that crosses political boundaries — and that the America is lending its considerable power and financial leverage to just one side in this battle: the rich.
It's time we stopped bullshitting in our political discourse about abortion and gay marriage and focus on what's really driving the New USA: class. How many of the Americans who died in Iraq belong to the top 1% wealthy? None, of course.
The fish rots from the head — the AWOL champagne unit Texas Air Guardsman who escaped Vietnam is helping a new generation of half-wit trust fund babies to escape the current artificial quagmire of his own making, Iraq. Paid for with the withheld wages and the spilled blood of the lower classes, the non-Richistanis, the neo-peasants.
Federal prosecutors are investigating the Kuwaiti company building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, probing allegations that foreign employees were brought to work on the massive project against their will and prevented from leaving the country.
The Department of Justice launched the probe of First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co. after former employees alleged that workers at the company were told they were being sent to Dubai, only to wind up in Iraq instead, people familiar with the matter said. According to the allegations, First Kuwaiti confiscated the workers' passports, so they were unable to depart Baghdad, these people said. [...]
The embassy compound is one of the only major U.S.-funded construction projects in Iraq that appears likely to be finished on schedule and within budget. The first State Department personnel are slated to begin moving into the new compound in September, with the remainder settling in by year's end. [...]
The new probe could be perilous for First Kuwaiti. If Justice found prosecution warranted, and convictions were obtained, the company and its executives could face steep civil and criminal penalties, including possibly being forced to return the nearly $600 million it has been paid by the U.S. government. Any executives proved to have taken part in alleged human-trafficking, meanwhile, might face lengthy prison sentences.
According to the company's Web site, First Kuwaiti is a privately owned company founded in 1996, with annual revenue topping $1 billion. [...]
Mr. [John] Owens [an American who formerly worked for the company in Baghdad], who had supervised construction of the embassy building, said he was waiting for a First Kuwaiti charter flight to Iraq in March 2006 when he noticed that the Pakistani and West African workers held boarding passes for Dubai. He asked a First Kuwaiti official about the discrepancy, and said he was told it was a way to get the workers past Kuwaiti customs. Mr. Owens, who lives in the U.S., assumed the workers knew they were going to Iraq, he said.
Mr. [Rory] Mayberry [another American], the second former employee, said he himself had been given a boarding pass marked for Dubai on a First Kuwaiti charter flight that he knew was bound for Baghdad. "It was the first sign that something was a bit off with the company," he says.
