A breakthrough for terror-free investing

One step at a time, Americans are cutting off funding for terrorism.Today, national security-minded investing became an idea whose time has come with the unveiling in New York of a new terror-free index series. Next Monday’s launch of this path-breaking financial tool will be followed within weeks by additional products that, taken together, promise to enable America’s capital markets to become important weapons against this country’s terrorist-sponsoring foes.

At a New York City press conference today, FTSE Group , a leading global index company, and Conflict Securities Advisory Group (CSAG), the preeminent research provider specializing in terror-free investment screening and certification services, announced the launch of the FTSE CSAG Terror-Free Index Series.   In addition, one of the Nation’s largest financial services companies, Northern Trust, revealed that it was going shortly to introduce three NYSE exchange-traded funds and an index-managed fund for large institutional investors (e.g., state pension funds). The former investment vehicles will permit individual Americans to take their portfolios terror-free at virtually no added cost and without sacrificing investment returns.

The Center for Security Policy welcomes these truly transformative developments.   The Center helped catalyze such innovations with its Divest Terror Initiative (DTI), which began in August 2004 with the publication of The Terrorism Investments of the 50 States – a portfolio analysis of eighty-seven of the largest public pension systems in America.  

In the wake of the Terrorism Investments study and thanks in no small part to the Center’s ongoing educational efforts led by Christopher Holton, the Director of the Divest Terror Initiative, nineteen U.S. states – including Missouri, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Utah, Virginia, Maine, Pennsylvania and Maryland – have enacted or are considering legislation requiring state plan sponsors to divest from international companies with active business ties to terror-sponsoring countries.  

The FTSE CSAG Terror-Free Index Series was, in turn, developed by these impartial index and research providers, respectively, in response to the sorts of exclusion requirements being adopted by these and other state governments, public institutional investors, private sector organizations and individuals. Definitions of excluded companies vary by state, but the trend is in the direction of prohibiting those engaged in other-than-humanitarian activities in Iran, Sudan, Syria and North Korea.  

After the press conference which featured remarks by FTSE America President Jerry Moskowitz, CSAG President Roger W. Robinson, Jr. and New York State Senator Craig Johnson, who spoke about his experience with divesting terror in Albany, Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. said:

"The introduction of terror-free indexes is a truly historic moment in the global struggle of our time, which we call the War for the Free World. From now on, the millions of Americans who have wondered what they could do to help combat terrorism will have the ability to do so by investing terror-free."