Not investing into companies that are obviously either frauds or extremely incompetent is the investor's job. We don't need a lot of new regulation to make it harder for you to buy bridges from people you meet on the subway.
Investing in companies is supposed to be risky. If someone acts foolishly as per your narrative then that's their problem. I don't see why everyone's freedom needs to be curtailed just to save the fools from themselves.
So long as we understand that I never suggested that prudent investing relies on the investor performing their own careful appraisal of the investment or relies on a regulatory agency--of any kind--screening investments.
Banning trading individual stocks is not the same thing as banning investing. A blind trust isn't a problem for a huge number of fortune 500 company executives.
Then they should have invested in companies that have stricter controls, or put their money somewhere safer w/ more transparency. That some investors are unsophisticated doesn't absolve them of liability.
I agree. All the annoying animations and hyperbole in the article notwithstanding, it does not seem as malicious as the article tries to portray it. It is rather disappointing that there are barriers to some of these investments but I think without these barriers you would open the gates for all sorts of malicious actors taking advantage of unsophisticated investors.
- caring about your investments aligning with your values is good
- investment firms violating civil rights laws and promoting fashionable bigotry using retirement funds to coerce companies into self-destructive behavior is bad
I agree with you, and on the flipside we need hedge funds and other “pro” investors to abide by the same rules. Big banks sure didn’t feel much pain in 2008...
I think it is both. The regulation is removing the upside risk as well as the downside risk. Many professional investors are investing to real stupid things and losing their money, it is not that difficult to find examples.
It's not the legal responsibility of the investors, because society has given them limited liability. It may or may not be their moral responsibility, depending on what they knew, encouraged, or whatever. And the usual payoff for morally-shady but legally-blameless behaviour is reputational damage.
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