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Categories: Shareholder Activism, Investment Updates
For five years Greece has been subjected to a regime of totally inappropriate austerity. As a result, for five years its poverty and misery have increased along with its impossibly large debt burden. And for all that time many investors and observers, including us, have realized the obvious fact that Greece could not pay off its debts. The only reasonable course of action has been and still is for the lenders to recognize these facts and reverse their destructive insistence on austerity. A less tranquil alternative has been for Greece itself to simply refuse to pay. In effect that has now happened. To read the full investment update, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
High Frequency Trading (HFT) is essentially no different from a highwayman standing in the road with a gun demanding a tributary toll from all who would go about their business to the better without him. In his book, Flash Boys, Michael Lewis succeeded in arousing some moral outrage about this highway robbery mostly outside of the circle of financial professionals. Most financial professionals seem to think that the amount it is costing investors is small enough to fall off their moral radar screens and that the high frequency traders deserve some reward for their ingenuity and investment. To read the full investment update, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
America spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, despite our uniquely non-socialized system, yet our health outcomes are at or below the bottom of the range for developed countries. Total healthcare spending in the US amounts to $8,500 per person, more than double the $3,900 median value for healthcare spending in 21 other advanced economies. And what does all this extra spending provide US residents? Fewer doctors (2.5 per 1,000 people vs. 3.5 elsewhere) and lower life expectancy (78.7 years vs. 81.2). Why? To read more, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
Like any good tantrum, the Tea Party’s recent hysterics are full of passion and logical incoherence. They claim concern over the deficit although the deficit is not a problem today. However it could become a problem, largely due to rising healthcare costs. At the same time, they are also apoplectic about the landmark healthcare law now being implemented, designed specifically to tame the same rising healthcare costs. Yet, while their contradictory and changing positions make it unclear what they want, it is clear how they plan on achieving it: extortion. To read more, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
As part of the progressive business community, we have a responsibility to do our part as investors and advocates in support of a world-wide transition to a low carbon economy. Solar energy holds the greatest promise for a renewable energy source with the potential to significantly replace fossil fuels. To read our current thoughts on solar power, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
As we write this, the sequester has come into effect and will add to the current policy of implementing ill-timed reductions in government spending. The sequester mandates cuts to defense and discretionary spending which will reduce GDP growth this year by about 0.6%. This is terrible economic policy as the recovery following the global financial crisis is still weak, and unemployment in the US is still too high. Of course, the sequester came about as a cynical political calculation aimed at the twin agenda of tax cuts for the privileged and cuts to the safety net of social programs for the vulnerable, not as economic policy that would spur higher employment. To read more, click here.
Category: Investment Updates
Past performance is not indicative of any specific investment or future results. Views regarding the economy, securities markets or other specialized areas, like all predictors of future events, cannot be guaranteed to be accurate and may result in economic loss to the investor. Specific securities identified and described may or may not be held in portfolios managed by Zevin Asset Management, LLC and do not represent all of the securities purchased, sold, or recommended for advisory clients. The reader should not assume that investments in the securities identified and discussed were or will be profitable. Any securities identified may not have beenselected based on their performance but as an illustrative tool for demonstrating ZAM's shareholder advocacy approach.
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