Norwegian ethics ruffle financial world

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun_norway0923sep23,0,5687946.story

Country's pension fund emerging force
By Tom Hundley | Tribune foreign correspondent
September 23, 2007

OSLO - Last year, the Church of Norway asked the Norwegian Government Pension Fund to consider divesting the fund's holdings in Caterpillar Inc. The reason: Caterpillar was selling the Israeli army bulldozers that were being used against Palestinian civilians.

Given the avalanche of negative publicity that swamped Wal-Mart last summer when the pension fund dumped its stock in the giant retailer after concluding that it was complicit in human rights violations, Peoria-based Caterpillar had reason to be concerned.

But the pension fund's council on ethics, which consists of a university philosopher, a human rights lawyer, a product safety expert, an economist and an international law expert, took a long look at Caterpillar and gave the company a clean bill of health.

Another Illinois company was not so lucky. On the advice of the ethics council, the pension fund last year sold off its shares of Chicago-based Boeing because the aerospace giant makes components for nuclear weapons.

All of this might seem like a harmless bit of feel-good Scandinavian moralizing were it not for the fact that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, worth about $350 billion, is one of the largest piles of investment capital in the world.

[scarletwoman]

1. I am 3rd generation Norwegian-American, with still-living distant relatives in Norway.

I wonder if they'd let me immigrate back to the Mother land?

sw

[Odin2005]

4. I'm a 4th Generation Norskie and I've wondered the same thing!

I have relatives in the the Bergen area and my family comes from a rural community near Bergen.

[scarletwoman]

6. Trondheim, here. (nt)

[mogster]

9. We'll have you both, thanks

Valuable Bush-refugees to the resistance movement ;-)

[Swamp Rat]

14. Can I come too?? Jeg snakker bare litt Norsk.

Well, I can at least learn å snakke. :D

[TahitiNut]

16. But... but... but... do you like lutefisk?

:rofl:

[Swamp Rat]

17. Yuck! I said I like Tørrfisk!

:D

[mogster]

19. You are SO enlisted!

No resistance movement without art :P

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

10. Also a 4th generation Norwegian and never considered that possibility.

I'll have to get in touch with ole' Grams about surviving relatives and make contact!!!

[KitSileya]

11. I live in Bergen.

I'm from Trondheim.

And sometimes us Norwegians get things right - if only we weren't so smug about it afterwards.

[Swamp Rat]

18. Hêia!

:hi: Hvordan står det til med deg? Jeg bodde inne Skien og Rjukan, Telemark ettall sommer. :D

That's about the extent of what I can say nowadays, but I am willing to learn more. :D Ha det bra. :hi:

[KitSileya]

25. Hei!

Hyggelig å se deg! Håper alt står bra til.

It's interesting to see the fact that Norway does have an impact on the world. We've tried to broker peace treaties and we hand out the Nobel Peace Prize, but those do not involve the average Norwegian. How we invest the money that we earn from the natural resources we have can have a much more immediate effect on the world - and on our own lives. Besides, we certainly need to 'sweep our own front porch' before we start ragging on others and their back yards.

[TahitiNut]

12. So am I. My grandparents were immigrants. Bergen & Oslo.

Members of my family have kept contact with relatives in Norway. I often wonder whether I could manage to move there - but then I remember how far it is from Tahiti and any warm weather.
:scared: <-- me in cold weather

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

15. *hee hee*

:scared: <--- TahitiNut in cold weather

(that tickled me)

[aquart]

2. Bulldozers? Not guns. Bulldozers?

What monsters.

[Hardrada]

3. I think we all know what they are talking about.

I am 4th generation Norwegian incidentally. Norway was badly victimized by the Nazis in WWII and the Norwegians, at least the older generations, know war criminality and the pain of occupation quite vividly.

[TahitiNut]

5. "... bulldozers that were being used against Palestinian civilians"? And an occasional activist.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. I wonder if I still have any relatives living in Stavanger

and if they'd let me move in with them?

[Hardrada]

8. I have cousins still along the Sognefjord.

I need to write to them!

[dkofos]

13. Good for them. Money IS power!!

[mogster]

20. This policy is a good thing

To invest ethically should be a option, especially if an institution that build it's work on ethics is the investor, like the church. This will also put focus on the often clouded chain of stock ownership, mother companies and so on. It must be a difficult job to untangle that for the investment fund.
However, this policy would be less confrontational and more easy to sell if the focus also was on reinvestment.
I think especially on the divestment in stock of weapons producing companies, where the answer is simple; sell the shares. But with a public promo of reinvesting in companies operating in other areas, like peace work or environmental work, this would come out different.

So, if you sell out of Raytheon like this fund did last year, you might reinvest in a company that produces windmills or does recycling. Maybe even in the same area. Then this policy, which might be difficult to sell at least to Raytheon workers and the unions (not to mention commercial media, lol), would be impossible to smear or turn into something negative, but instead be an altogether positive effort. You clean up your business ethics, divest from weapon producing companies and divert good investment money to peace and environmental work instead. And may give Raytheon workers an option to work in another area than producing nuclear weapons.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

21. Well as a Norwegian

living about 30 mins from ålesund, i'd want to be one of the first to welcome you all back 'home' :)

[supernova]

22. Would some nice Norwegian man pls adopt me or marry me?

:loveya:

(I'm English (possibly Scots) and French ancestry but willing to relocate to a sane country)

edit: I'm an excellent cook, great in bed and a very sexy petite blue-eyed blonde.

[me b zola]

23. When I was in Jr. High we had a foreign exchange student from Oslo

Harold, is that invitation still good?

[robinlynne]

24. cool!