Sea Change for Public Sector Pension Funds And Other U.S. Fiduciaries – US DOL Green Lights ESG Investing…
SustainabilityHQ Highlights (November 19, 2015)
Sea Change for Public Sector Pension Funds And Other U.S. Fiduciaries – US DOL …
On an important societal issue (think of civil rights, or immigration, or highway construction funding, or criminal justice, or environmental protection) the U.S. Congress deliberates and passes the laws (Federal statutes), the President of the United States of America signs them into law, then an agency is directed to develop the “rules of the road” for those affected by or having to comply with the law. A lot can happen along the way to short-term enactment and long-term enforcement. Industry opponents may work to water down and dilute the effectiveness of the new law (attacking the regulations that are in development, say by the Securities & Exchange Commission for securities laws in the case of Dodd-Frank, or rule making by FDIC for banking industry regulations under Dodd-Frank).
Once the law is in place, and there are rules-of-the-road, there are actions that the Executive branch can take to further enforce or interpret the law and its intentions. These include Executive Orders coming forth from the White House (221 to date over seven years for President Barack Obama). Or, the executive branch cabinet agencies can issue interpretations for regulated parties to follow. This just happened – the U.S. Department of Labor, the enforcer of ERISA (The Employee Retirement I Income Security Act of 1974) for fiduciaries, reversed a prior “interpretation” of the law and related regulations.
