Pressing Apple for change at The Oscars of capitalism

The media calls the shareholder meeting of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway “Woodstock for capitalists.” Apple’s annual meeting in California, which we attended late last month, should be called “The Oscars of capitalism.” The Apple shareholder meeting is exclusive (it’s difficult for investors to nab a ticket and Al Gore is in attendance), slickly produced in the gleaming “Steve Jobs Theater,” and surrounded by several layers of Secret Service-level security.

Climate Change: The Physical Risks

Climate change risk is a real concern for the world. Last year, scientists approached a consensus that our opportunity to reach the ambitious goal of curbing emissions to avoid global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels has come and gone. In the current climate, coral reefs are dying, deforestation is proceeding rapidly, and Australia has succumbed to a continental rash of fires.

A Tale of Two Sectors

2019 played out to be a year of extreme dichotomy in the U.S. and to a lesser extent the rest of the world. On the one hand, consumer confidence remained high and consumers continued to spend their growing wages, thanks to extremely low unemployment and rebounding real estate activity. On the other hand, the manufacturing sector fell into recession during the year as the global slowdown spread and intensified, and trade tensions continued to beat down manufacturers’ confidence (see Chart 1). To counteract the slowing economy and prolong the economic expansion, central banks worldwide provided huge amounts of monetary stimulus by cutting interest rates. The U.S. Federal Reserve cut policy rates three times in 2019, helping to right the inverted yield curve and, so far, appearing to have successfully avoided an economic hard landing. Likewise, a total of 35 central banks globally eased monetary policy in 2019.

Zevin Asset Management Gives on Giving Tuesday

For the past seven years, the Tuesday following Thanksgiving has been dubbed Giving Tuesday, as a palate cleanser after the over-commercialized one-two of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We at Zevin Asset Management would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about a few organizations that we have supported, not only today but also throughout the year.

Deforestation and the Investor Dilemma

“The Amazon rainforest is burning.”

That revelation — spread by advocates, scientists and affected communities — demanded the world’s attention in 2019. This summer was a record fire season in Brazil’s Amazon region, often called “the lungs of the world” for the zone’s importance to our atmosphere and our climate. Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that the fires were fabricated or overblown. We know that this is false thanks to satellite imagery and NGO reports.