Investing

April 2000

As we entered the millennium we again were deluged with advertising from the investment industry promoting the need to build personal financial security by investing in their products.  The message is that we need to make our money work for us if we are to achieve individual financial freedom.

During this period two meetings related to business and investment which I attended stand out because of the extreme contrasts they represent. The one was hosted by a church-based credit union to inform members of the potential of a ‘progressive’ mutual fund.  The other was with a small business person who wants to develop his business as a community business owned by its future employees.  Both should be understood in spiritual terms.

The ‘progressive’ mutual fund meeting involved a presentation by the fund manager to some 150 people.  The meeting can be viewed only from a religious perspective.

The market functions as a god – a spiritual force which is invisible and, at least to the presenter, omnipotent. The financial manager acted as a high priest, interpreting what the market demands the people must do if they are to receive its blessing. There was, of course, no mention that, like all false gods, the market requires human sacrifice.  There was no mention that the market turns everything in the creation under its control into marketable commodities with no other intrinsic value.

The presentation included the following: The market is pleased that governments have gotten their fiscal house in order (no mention as to what this has cost in social terms or that it involves a `war on the poor'). The market will not be pleased and give no returns if unemployment rates go too low; in Canada this means less than 8%. (Is this good news to the poor?) Global markets are improving because the policies of the International Monetary Fund are working. Personal investments must be in global markets to achieve returns and the mutual fund has devised a mechanism to circumvent the law so that you can invest totally in a global fund while still receiving the RRSP tax benefits. (Canadian law states that RRSP qualified investments can only hold a maximum of 20% in foreign securities.)

Your managers (priests) have developed various computer models to predict when a country's economy or an economic sector will experience a downturn so that funds can be pulled out before it happens. (Translation: If your global or local neighbours are predicted to experience economic hard times, we will ensure that the rug is pulled out from under them.)

And the final message: put your faith in the interpretation presented by the priest and you will achieve security now and through your old age.

The audience, most of whom were professing Christians, and would tell you that their only security is in their God, enthusiastically applauded and mingled after the meeting to discuss how to get their security from the market.

A very sad situation.  But, equally sad, is that there does not appear to be a place in today’s Christianity which is naming the powers at work here or showing people another way.

The meeting illustrates the seductive power of the market and contrasts vividly with a meeting I had later with a man in southwestern Ontario through my co-op development work.  The personal meeting is typical of what we often experience in working with co-op development – meetings characterized by a different economic spirit focused on the common good.

This man has put together, at his own expense, the elements of a potentially successful small business.   But, instead of building it for himself, he wants to build it for the community and incorporate a co-operative in which he would place the emerging business as well as all the future time he will spend in its development.

Although he is willing to put his past and future personal economic life on the line for the common good, i.e. employment and ownership for future workers, this business will need more financial investment to be successful.  This money won’t come from banks, credit unions, or other conventional sources because these institutions focus on individuals and an individual’s balance sheet.

This man is not alone.  In the co-op movement there are men and women all over the country who commit their lives to developing the common good through co-op business.  Doing it without sufficient financial resources is extremely difficult and can lead to failure just because there is not enough current cash even when long term prospects are good.   Being intimately involved with people who put everything they own on the line because they `hunger and thirst for economic righteousness’ makes it heart-wrenching to see fellow Christians giving their allegiance to the market.

What this common good initiative and all the others require is solidarity investment – people with extra money who are willing to invest in solidarity with folks who are putting their economic lives on the line to promote a common economic good.  Economic solidarity in investing can be one way to move forward along an alternative path and create public examples pointing to a new economic way.