The Norwegian Model.

Damn Socialists, always meddling in capitalist profit specialties.
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The Norwegian Model.
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INVESTING IN ETHICS.
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Norway is rich in oil and natural gas. But it's also a resource success story that could provide a model for other nations. The country invests the lion's share of its oil riches in programs aimed at improving the lives of everyday Norwegians.
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The central bank administers the country's pension fund, which is financed mainly by Norway's booming oil and natural gas industries. As the world's third-largest oil exporter, the fund has a king's ransom at its disposal. The last time the the books were balanced, the fund disposed of €196 billion ($250 billion) in assets. Analysts predict it will grow this year to become the second-largest pension fund in the world.
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In November 2004, the government established ethical guidelines for the investment policy of its pension fund. Since then, an Ethical Council has overseen the various investments and separated the good from the bad. Seven corporations -- among them BAE Systems, Boeing and Honeywell -- were recently removed from the portfolio. Norwegian stocks worth 3.3 million Norwegian krona or €420 million ($535 million) have been sold as part of the ethical clean-up effort.
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The corporations were blacklisted because of their involvement in arms production -- for producing components that go into the production of nuclear weapons that clash with the "fundamental humanitarian principles" of the Norwegian codex. Overall, 17 arms corporations have been declared off limits by Norway's ethics guardians.
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In order to avoid similar investments in the future, Norges Bank has armed itself with a strong condex and team of ethicists. "We want to combine economic and ethical interests," investment director Knut Kjaer says. "We are powerful and we can invest in ethical values."
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Syse was hired as a kind of early warning system, as the company's "very own ethical compass." But when Syse was first approached with the offer last summer, he thought it was a prank. "Do you even know who you're talking to" he asked? "I'm a philosopher, not a banker. If I had a stock or a bond in front of me, I wouldn't even know the difference."
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He doesn't have to, either. Syse isn't expected to know the ABCs of investment management. All that's expected of him is that he examine the corporations that the bank invests in.
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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,426733,00.html