Americans, their Financial Institutions and the Environment – Nov.27.2005

By Gary Morton at http://citizensontheweb.ca

    After my boss on my day job ran into cash flow problems and didn’t pay me for three weeks I was forced to work weekends and eves in market research.

    Head-banging phone work few people can stand…intrusive work for a respected market research company. My survey involved phoning Americans of higher income that have a number of investments.

    So how did I get the computer phone list? It seems the financial institution … in this case TD Waterhouse (the do-it-yourself investment guys) and likely some other institutions, gave the list to the marketing company. And since l like to take notes on the side with a pencil, I kept and tore up a bunch of notes with the names, addresses, phone numbers and info on total amounts invested of numerous wealthy Americans.

    Is this unusual? I doubt it … consider much of your personal info given to banks to be open and often shared among them … with so many possible data leaks that you could never escape the hordes of marketers, hucksters and con men. In my case I consider myself honest, though I have a criminal record. Financial institutions like TD Waterhouse have forms buried in their web sites where you can request that your info be kept confidential, but I doubt if filling them out would help much. Being on do-not-call lists doesn’t help either because I called through to many people on them. 

   Key questions on this long survey involved the environment. Wealthy people responded as they were promised a cash sum on completion of the phone survey. Some people with nearly a million in paper investments beyond their estate even thought it great to answer a survey that pays a small sum.  

   So how did the environment do? Well, the American investors I surveyed all picked the worst option. They didn’t care at all whether a company or financial institution had a good environmental reputation. Even going so far as to make proud statements on how the environment meant nothing to them. 

   And consider that these are the polite people, who talk to you, as compared to the endless hang-ups, outright nasty people and those who know you’re up to something invasive and quasi legal. 

   Other questions involved selecting among all the major global investment firms. So take it that they will all likely buy the report or learn of it and it will lead them not to care about the environment. 

   With seminars happening all the time on how to be a do-it-yourself online investor or get 800 percent returns based on the advice of some minor guru … and these seminars teaching nothing but greed, we can look for the gap between the rich and the poor to continue to grow as our oceans, forests and world die. 

   Environmental groups have made little progress in the US in regards to responsible investing … it’s just media spin … and there will be a world of black sky America and burning heat and suffering coming. 

   He who sows to greed will reap corruption … and they who sow to winds of global warming will reap the whirlwinds of it.
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