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An Activist Fund

Taking a page from the playbook of the liberals, the Free Enterprise Action Fund has tailored corporate activism for those of us that believe in free markets and small governments.  

A recent blog entry sums up the benefits of this fund:

"1) Instead of giving $500,000 every year, donate $10 million to an anti-environmentalism organization. The entire amount will be returned to you after a certain number of years, or whenever you decide to stop your activism.

2) The organization invests the money in an extremely diversified portfolio of S&P500 companies. The idea here is not to use any special financial expertise. The idea is not to try to do better than your S&P500 index fund. The idea is simply to replicate the results of an S&P500 fund, mechanically. So, for instance, $10 million across 500 companies would be $20,000 in each. That's enough to buy about 400 shares in most S&P500 companies.

3) Assuming that the S&P500 (including dividends) goes up 5% a year, the organization can withdraw about $500,000 out of the corpus each year.

Now comes the part that's different from other endowments:

4) The couple of guys employed by this anti-environmentalist organization are not really fund managers. They are activist/campaigners against the environmentalism-friendly policies of S&P500 companies. They can do this more effectively now, because they are shareholders!!"

For the complete Blog entry see: http://softwarenerd.blogspot.com/2006/10/activist-fund.html.
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The "Democratic Return"

Companies that give more money to Democrats outperform companies that give more money to Republicans.  This outrageous claim is made by a new mutual fund run by two Democratic operatives.  The details can be found at: http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=FEAOX:US&sid=a.lcqb8Ye17g

As any investor knows of course, giving to Democrats cannot be the sole judge of a company's returns.  The founders of the Blue Fund know this as well.  Therefore, their fund's stock picking criteria also includes screens based on how well a company adheres to CSR principles.  What are these principles?  In short, a company should serve the interest of stakeholders, not shareholders.  For more information on this, see: http://www.freeenterpriser.com/

In other words, the Blue Fund is contending that all a company needs to do is give to Democrates and charities and they will outperform their peers.  Despite the ridiculousness of this fund's claims, the Blue Fund represents a truly dangerous trend.  Liberals are continually bringing the political beliefs into the corporate boardroom where they do not belong.  If not stopped, the U.S. economic powerhouse will begin to falter.  The political fight has a new battleground: Corporate America.  The Right must show up for this battle, else the Left will win through forfeit. 
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