A New Year's Message from Dwight

Many of you have asked about the progress being made to bring out the book that I have been working on about Biblical Responsible Investing.  I have completed more than 30 interviews and I have six more to go if all goes well and the table of contents and several chapters have reached the 4th and 5th draft stages.  It appears that there will be 11 or 12 chapters depending on how we present some of the material and several appendices that will include some of your input from some of the readers of this very MMM.  I wanted to share some of the concepts from the book and also give you information about one of the areas of concern now rather than waiting for the book.

The book will try to focus on how various money managers are working to offer services that screen out companies that are in violation of activities that many Christians find offensive. 

Here is a list of some of the areas of conflict:

1. Abortion
2. Pornography
3. Anti-family entertainment
4. Support of lifestyles that are counter to Biblical principles
5. Alcohol
6. Tobacco
7. Gaming
8. Corporate Governance, (excessive compensation), negative shareholder focus
9. Environmental negligence

Each week for the next several months, I will take each of these issues and focus on what is happening and why you might start to make changes in how you deal with these ideas in your own investments and also how you can help others.  Many have questioned how we can possibly make a difference in these issues as our thoughts will often be in contention to the very companies we work for as well as those we have been investing in.  My answer to that is Jeremiah 33:3

Under the heading of “enough is enough”, Robert Nardelli, the former President of Home Depot who we discussed last year after his boorish attitude in dealing with questions from shareholders at last years annual meeting is gone.  The board finally had enough of his act and indicated that he would take a pay cut for next year. 

Mr. Nardelli could not accept that and resigned taking all of $210 million as his parting gift (compensation and retirement benefits) in addition to the other hundreds of millions he “earned” in the previous 5 years while shareholders saw the value of their holding in Home Depot soar to a negative 3% return for the same time period.  Yea, I think he earned it!!  Maybe you would like to tune in next week to start joining the forces of others who will not mark another proxy card in favor of a stock incentive plan that doesn’t include a cost figure with the request. 

Sent January 8, 2007

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