I made a significant change to my retirement savings plan this week. On Monday, I went to my local RBC branch and told an advisor that I wanted to divest completely from the United States. Well, you’d think I had asked to invest in the Martian stock exchange. Trudy, the advisor, explained at some length that the USA is the largest market in the world, and has the largest historical and near-term potential growth. She repeated often that this would have a significant effect on my returns. 

I responded by repeatedly indicating that I’m not making this change for financial reasons, but for ethical reasons. I mentioned the powerful CEOs who cheered Trump’s inauguration speech and Musk’s salute. I pointed out that this is the second time Trump has been elected, demonstrating that a significant fraction of the American population supports the destructive policies he was very clear that he would implement. 

Trudy admitted that she was not confident in making this change herself, so she called a more senior advisor. It took about half an hour, but she put together a new portfolio that met my needs: a combination of Canadian bonds, and Canadian and international equities that did not include any American investment.¹ She explained how this differed from my previous portfolio, and once again, how it would affect my exposure. 

She asked if I wanted to think about it for a few days, to delay a bit because it was such a significant change. I indicated that my overall investment knowledge was not going to change much in a couple of days, and the situation that precipitated my decision was not changing any time soon either. In the end, she convinced me to come back on Wednesday and talk to a more senior advisor, Ashley, one of the two people she had called for advice during the appointment. 

As I said in my previous post, I left that meeting feeling like the little boy at the end of Mary Poppins, who just wanted his tuppence to do with as he wished. When I got home, I called an investment contact one of my friends had given me, someone who might be able to manage my money a little more personally. 

I’m not going to give her name, because I was not happy with that phone call. First, she told me at length about her qualifications, indicating that I would be in good hands. But when I told her my plan, and why I wanted to divest from the US, it felt like she was putting up a solid wall of resistance, telling me why this was a bad idea, what I would lose, and why I would be crazy to do such a thing.²

Eventually, I had to interrupt her, thank her for her time, and say that I needed to take some time for myself right now. I was on the edge of tears. Even though both advisors had repeatedly said, “It’s your money,” that phrase was always followed by “but…” They were both doing their jobs, both providing advice according to their best practices, in my financial interest. 

Why was I so upset?

What upset me so much was how narrow their perspective was. They clearly saw ethics as a distant secondary consideration compared to making money. I may currently be unemployed, with not nearly enough savings to retire on in ten years, but I cannot relegate ethics to second place anymore, especially with the magnitude of the domestic threat within the United States. 

Wednesday’s appointment went much more smoothly than I expected. Ashley clearly explained the difference between my old and new portfolios, including their returns in recent years. (More about that later.) Having presented me with the best available information, she accepted my decision to proceed. My RRSPs are now barred from the US, just as I am.

A do-not-travel zone

I cannot enter the USA because the sex on my identification does not match what the US government thinks it should be. I can’t even take a vacation in Mexico (not that I can afford to) because I would need to pass through American airspace. If I managed to enter the US, I would likely be detained by ICE, where the best thing that could happen to me would be speedy deportation. The more likely outcome would be indefinite detention in a facility that has become infamous for human rights abuses. 

I’m not exaggerating. This is happening right now. 

This applies to anyone under the rainbow, especially those under the trans umbrella. It also applies to anyone whose skin is darker than the administration thinks it should be. And to all women. Human rights as a whole were being eroded; now they’re being ignored completely. 

Why are we in this mess?

Who is responsible? It’s not Donld Trump. He may currently be giving the orders, but he didn’t install himself in the White House. A significant fraction of the global population, especially of the western world, has been led to believe that the pursuit of money is the ultimate goal in life. For those who are born into money, their goal quite often becomes the pursuit of every dollar on Earth that isn’t currently theirs. 

In some countries, government regulation holds would-be oligarchs at bay. In particular, countries where everyone has access to education and health care are more resistant to fascism. 

But education in the United States has been eroding for some time, and they’ve never had adequate access to health care, leaving average Americans susceptible to accept whatever message is shouted the loudest. Since Citizens United v. FEC, large corporations, with vast sums of money, have been able to out-shout any organization that encourages helping others, with the message that money is the most important thing on Earth, and you can have all you want if you just work hard enough. 

This, of course, is pure bovine excrement because it’s obvious that many of the people who work the hardest make the lowest wages. But it has become such an endemic belief that Americans³ have pushed their politics ever farther to the “right” to the point where today’s Democrats are basically Reagan-era conservatives who still (for the most part) work to preserve individual rights. 

Anti-ethics

As I talked to the investment advisors this week, it struck me just how anti-ethical the financial sector has become. Corporate scandals used to be a thing. If a CEO was caught making illegal deals, they were fined heavily by the securities commission and their stock value went down. If a corporation caused damage to the environment or injury to their employees, they were convicted of a strict liability offense, potentially faced prosecution for criminal negligence, and their stock value tanked. 

That has changed. The Tangerine Turnip himself said in 2016 that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.⁴ In the same vein, corporations have taken willful actions that have caused the deaths of many people without any consequence to their stock value. As long as investors remain invested, the money keeps flowing. 

The prisoner’s dilemma

Isn’t is possible for the “free market” to punish wrongdoers in the marketplace? It is, but it’s not likely. If a large fraction of investors put ethics before financial gain—if they put human life before financial gain—withdrawing their investments from problematic corporations would devalue unethical corporations and steer the marketplace toward more ethical decisions. 

But it would have to be a substantial portion of the financial sector. A few institutions offering “ethical funds” as a marketing gimmick only results in a small volume of under-performing funds. As long as the broader marketplace considers ethics to be secondary to financial gain, even investment managers who want to retain some degree of ethics are stuck either following the money or getting out of the financial sector altogether. 

My future gains

I’m not rich. I have no guarantee that I won’t be retiring to a cardboard box on the street twenty years from now. But I can’t support blindly anti-ethical investments any longer. When CEOs cheer the rise of fascism, I don’t care if investing in their companies will increase my returns by six percent within the next decade…

Hold on; how much?

That’s the comparison of how my old RRSP portfolio performed over the last eight years compared to how my new combination of funds performed. Six percent over eight years. Is that worth supporting a regime that destroys the lives of marginalized human beings, using them as scapegoats for the economic issues they themselves have caused? 

If you’re a fund manager overseeing billions of dollars, you would probably say yes because that six percent represents tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But if your retirement income barely outlives you, does it make that much of a difference whether your children will inherit $5000 or $5030? 

“Here I stand. I can do no other.”

Martin Luther’s famous quote rings loud in my mind. I’m not a reformation leader, and this isn’t a call to action. I don’t expect other people to follow my lead. But this was a decision I had to make for my own peace of mind. It’s not a perfect decision. My investments still support corporations that harm their employees and the world around them. But at least I can reduce my personal contribution to worst elements of the economy of destruction. 

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1. Directly, anyway. I know that the business entities in these funds have interests and investments in the US. ↩︎
2. She didn’t actually say I would be crazy, but that was the impression I got from her lengthy harangue. ↩︎
3. And other people around the world, but America is the undisputed leader of this juggernaut ↩︎
4. This is a far cry from 1988, when Gary Hart’s bid for the presidency ended when a reporter caught him with his mistress, or 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached for having an affair and lying about it after the fact. The current oval occupant brags about his affairs. ↩︎