Terror-Free Investing: A war we can win

Today's Financial News - Posted May 1, 2008

“Recently, the FTSE released a list of 239 publicly traded companies with ties to one of four countries that knowingly support terror-related activity. Any company with business in Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan went on the list.” - Andrew Snyder

By Andrew Snyder

Baltimore (TFN)- One of the key words in this presidential election campaign is “divisive.” Everywhere I turn, I hear one of the candidates uttering the trouble caused by the word in one sentence and showing a prime definition of it in the next.

Let’s face it. This country has rarely been more divided than it is right now. The politics of war, economy, and providing for the poor (and lazy) have never been so black and white. Even so, beyond old stereotypes, we know little about what either political party stands for or what it intends to bring to the country.

Like I said, we know general philosophies. The right believes in a trickle down economy. And the left believes in no economy (so what… I’m biased). One thing we do know about each party’s beliefs is the Democrats are fighting to reduce global environment change and the Republicans are hell-bent on ridding the world of terrorism.

Enough of us are writing about how to make money (or lose it) from “green” investments. I am sick of hearing how ethanol is going to save the planet in one headline and reading how it will destroy us all in the next. We have heard it all before.

So I am going to stick to my right-leaning roots and tell you how you can use your investments to fight terrorism. Now that is worth reading about.

No money… No jihad

Across the planet last year, 22,000 folks lost their lives to terrorist acts. Nevermind that nearly half of those murders took place in an American-occupied country, that figure is way too high. As investors there is something we can do about it. We can keep our money in the hands of the good guys.

Recently, the FTSE released a list of 239 publicly traded companies with ties to one of four countries that knowingly support terror-related activity. Any company with business in Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan went on the list. Companies like Siemens, ABN Ambro, Royal Dutch Shell, and Nokia all made a showing.

The money is always right

Surprisingly, the notion of terror-free investing is catching on. Nearly every state in the nation has created, is creating, or is at least thinking of legislation that forces its state-sponsored investments from putting money into any of the companies on the list. They believe it is a great way to ensure terrorist groups find it hard to get the money they need.

It’s true that many of these countries are doing only a small percentage of their business in these four countries, but when you add up the total amount of money public companies are pouring into these economies, it turns out to be trillions of American dollars.

The bad guys may not be scared of our military might, but they are certainly scared of losing their funding.

The more we keep our money out of the hands of our enemies, the safer we will be and the sooner our boys will return home. Even you Democrats will like that one.