‘Commitments are no longer enough’
Connecticut companies move to diversify their workforces
During Black History Month, companies across the state have touted their support of the African American community. But as many of those firms acknowledge, fulfilling those declarations requires yearround work.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of major firms have recognized they need to do more to tackle racial injustices and inequalities and make their organizations more diverse and inclusive.
Initiatives such as a new fellowship program at hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates underscore the seriousness of those efforts, while universities such as UConn said
they are also working to diversify the pipeline of future professionals.
“In order to build that rich and deep understanding of the economies and markets, you’ve got to look at it from a wide variety of
opinions and perspectives,” Alan Bowser, Bridgewater’s chief diversity officer, said in an interview.
“You need diversity of thought. Diversity is literally critical to the success of Bridgewater in our business mission.”
Taking action
Westport-based Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, has recruited about 40 students for the inaugural class of its new Rising Fellows program. African American students account for the largest under-represented group in the cohort, while Bridgewater also sought applications from other students of color, women and students who are members of the LGBTQ+ community.
All of them are first-year college students.
The program comprises sessions held remotely on weekday evenings that started on Feb. 14 and run until March 4. It aims to provide students an introduction to financial services, help them build skills to understand investing and the global economy, and
backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia declared then that kicking it out of SWIFT would be equivalent to a declaration of war. The allies — criticized ever after for responding too weakly to Russia’s 2014 aggression — shelved the idea. Russia since then has tried to develop its own financial transfer system, with limited success.
The U.S. has succeeded before in persuading the Belgium-based SWIFT system to kick out a country — Iran, over its nuclear program. But kicking Russia out of SWIFT would also hurt other economies, including those of the U.S. and key ally Germany.
The disconnection from SWIFT announced by the West on Saturday is partial, leaving Europe and the United States room to escalate penalties further later.
Announcing the measures in Brussels, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said would push the bloc also to “paralyze the assets of Russia’s Central bank” so that its transactions would be frozen. Cutting several commercial banks from SWIFT “will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally,” she added.
“Cutting banks off will stop them from conducting most of their financial transactions worldwide and effectively block Russian exports
and imports,” she added.
Getting the EU on board for sanctioning Russia through SWIFT had been a tough process since EU trade with Russia amounted to 80 billion euros, about 10 times as much as the United States, which had been an early proponent of such measures.
Germany specifically had balked at the measure since it could hit them hard. But Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement that “after Russia’s shameless attack … we are working hard on limiting the collateral damage of decoupling (Russia) from SWIFT so that it hits the right people. What we need is a targeted, functional restrictions of SWIFT.”
As another measure, the allies announced a commitment “to taking measures to limit the sale of citizenship — so-called golden passports — that let wealthy Russians connected to the Russian government become citizens of our countries and gain access to our financial systems.”
The group also announced the formation this week of a transatlantic task force to ensure that these and other sanctions on Russia are implemented effectively through information sharing and asset freezes.
Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security said despite a complete SWIFT ban, “these measures will still be painful to Russia’s economy. They reinforce the measures already taken earlier this week by making transactions
more complicated and difficult.”
Ziemba says how much pain the sanctions render on the Russian economy will depend on which banks have been restricted and which measures are taken to restrict the ability of the Central Bank to operate.
“Regardless, these sort of escalating sanctions, removing banks from SWIFT, restricting the Central Bank, this will all make it more difficult to get commodities from Russia and will increase the pressure on the financial market.”
U.S. lawmakers have called on Biden to deploy every available financial sanction, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying Thursday that America should “ratchet the sanctions all the way up. Don’t hold any back. Every single available tough sanction should be employed and should be employed now.”
But Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the SWIFT ban would be complicated and time-consuming in part because the U.S. doesn’t have control over the decision.
The problem is that banning Russia from SWIFT might not cut it off from the global economy as cleanly as proponents think. Also, there could be blowback in the form of slower international growth. And rival messaging systems could gain users in ways that erode the power of the U.S. dollar — all of which has left SWIFT as a sanction waiting to be deployed.