Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 8015 As described in Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits, Hamilton was closed as a result of a lengthy period of litigation with the federal government. During this period, I was approached by one of the leaders of the SRI industry and invited to speak at a conference on SRI investing. When I arrived, I discovered that the sponsors of the conference were large financial institutions that I associated with engineering the housing bubble and related mortgage fraud as well as laundering narcotics-trafficking revenues. The various SRI industry representatives made it clear that they were not comfortable discussing this. I left with the clear impression that the goal of SRI investing was to affirm the overt leadership of the people and institutions running the covert economy on a highly profitable basis. The crim- inals had the socially committed marketing their stocks while avoiding any interference with the “power lines.” Then I discovered that one of the leaders of the LBO industry described in Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits was financing an effort to promote B Corporations – the idea being that honest people should take on more liability and complexity. My notion is that we must take the advantages away from criminal players. The worst thing we could do is to add additional requirements and liabilities onto the lawful players! By 2005, I decided to share some of my thoughts on SRI investing in a Solari Audio Seminar: Beyond Socially Responsible Investing: Is SRI Hazardous to Our Wealth? http://solari.com/outreach/telesem/BSRI1495. htm Reviewing SRI Mutual Funds and ETFs My next encounter with SRI investing was reviewing mutual funds and ETFs owned by investment advisory clients, as well as reading about various approaches by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds when their experience arose in the process of market reviews for the Solari Report. I found a wide variety–from funds doing extraor- dinary things (check out the history of the very fascinating Norwegian sovereign wealth funds here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_ Pension_Fund_of_Norway) to funds that clearly were designed to create pure packaging to make the irresponsible look respon- sible. To a certain extent, some of the irrespon- sibility was part of the “Soft Revolution” tactics that we have discussed and followed on the Solari Report. For example, during the 2008-9 financial crisis, I was reviewing a mutual fund in a SRI company prospectus that covered all their funds. The fund next to the one I was reviewing was designed to invest in companies that were good to women. I could not believe my eyes! When I looked at the top 10 holdings, most would have been my candidates for the companies most harmful to all humans – including women. If you had asked me to compile a list of the top 10 companies most harmful to women, many would have been on my list. By assessing the companies using their official description of their business and judging their policies toward women, based on expensive pack- ages of personnel policies that I would describe as inconsequential in comparison to the impact of their real actions in the marketplace, the SRI community had come up with a way to affirm and flow SRI capital to the leaders of the housing bubble and financial crisis. Pardon my French, but if your financial entrap- ment scheme results in thousands, even hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, what do I care if you hire and promote 50 women and minorities from Harvard Business School, or you start a minor lending program for women-owned busi- nesses with a very small percentage of the profits of your predatory loan scams? Case in point – JP Morgan Chase was one of the largest holdings of that SRI fund. I challenge you to read Helen Chaitman’s JP Madoff or look at the long history of fines against JP Morgan for