Listen to your gut.

It’s not always what you want and it’s not always right, BUT it is at least as good as your head when it comes to emotional response and relationships, and life is all about relationships. A study on gut-feeling as it relates to the longevity of matrimonial relationships indicates that it is a better predictor …
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Investing Legend Jack Bogle Answers Your Questions

A quick read of the transcript is worth the few minutes it takes.  And if you have the time, enjoy the video. Jack Bogle, with 84 years of life experience, much of it in investing, shares some views with Motley Fool’s Tom Gardner.  He offers worthy insights, like this incidental quote “Liquidity is the last …
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Banking and Sustainability? Yes please.

UNEP Finance Initiative launched their Online Guide to Banking and Sustainability at their Global Roundtable – Financing The Future We Want – a couple of weeks ago.  It offers a comprehensive reference and training tool easily accessible online, covering: 1. Board & CEO 2. Management 3. Communication 4. Sustainability 5. Legal 6. Risk 7. Business …
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Dumb Things Finance People Say

A few snippets of wisdom to help you keep your feet on the ground. Dumb Things Finance People Say by Morgan Housel, The Motley Fool My job requires reading a lot of financial news. It’s one of my favorite parts. But it gives me a front-row seat to the downside of financial journalism: gibberish, nonsense, …
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People said no to GMO, so now big agroindustry and pharma-chem businesses are engineering mutagenic food. Yum!

Mutagenesis isn’t new: Breeders have relied on it for decades to produce thousands of varieties of lettuce, oats, rice, and other crops.  Pharma-chem companies sell high volumes of mutant breeds, ranging from wheat to sunflowers, in markets that reject genetically engineered seeds.  It just doesn’t sound very nice and might even be a dangerous idea. …
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Facing down immorality might not pay, but it’s the only option.

Ethical Corp, an on-online magazine, published an article Executive whistle blowing: what to do when no one listens (with useful comments too).   It is difficult to broach the subject of dealing with immoral behaviour in companies because people who are immoral don’t care and those that do can rarely change the culture.  The culture comes …
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Deforestation of 100 hectares per week, in one instance alone.

Scientists monitoring satellite images noticed a swathe of tropical forest disappearing in Peru.  It toook a few weeks to get accurate imagery but once done they estimated estimated a deforestation rate of roughly 100 hectares (247 acres) per week in the tract they observed. At least one thousand hectares were cleared near Tamshiyacu.  An estimated …
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Most big companies don’t care about sustainability.

Only 3% of the world’s largest companies report on  the first generation of sustainability indicators according to Corporate Knights report on Trends in Sustainability Disclosure. The seven indicators are: employee turnover, energy, greenhouse gases (GHGs), lost-time injury rate, payroll, waste and water.  Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Corporate Knights recommends mandatory disclosure because voluntary disclosure is plainly …
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Make the new CEO an intern first.

This sounds like a really good idea.   “Experience matters? The Impact of Prior CEO Experience on Firm Performance” discusses research by Monika Hamori of the IE Business School in Spain and Burack Koyuncu of the NEOMA Business School in France which indicates that “past performance is not an indicator of future success”.  That sounds like …
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Divest fossil fuel holdings, or die.

That’s a big picture perspective, presented starkly to attract some attention.  Sadly, few people feel the pressure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.  Let’s have a look at some of the detail. A 2012 article in Rolling Stone , by Bill McKibben of 350.org, galvanised a fossil fuel divestment campaign …
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