Dan Katz and Stephen Miran Ph.D. stop by The Business Brew to discuss JSG Investing. JSG investing is investing that focuses on Jobs, Security, and Growth. Their firm, Amberwave partners (see https://www.amberwavepartners.com/) helps investors align their portfolios and values, putting their savings to work for the good of American communities.

Dan and Stephen have very interesting bios. They read as follows:

Steve Miran is a co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Amberwave. Steve has ten years of successful investing experience including as a hedge fund portfolio manager and head of macro strategy, and before that as an analyst at Fidelity Investments. He has invested in major asset classes in both developed and emerging economies.

Before Amberwave, Steve was senior advisor for economic policy at the United States Department of the Treasury, which he entered in April 2020 to assist with fiscal support to the economy. He contributed to the implementation and evaluation of several CARES Act programs, in particular the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided over $800 billion of job-preserving investments in American small businesses and supported over 50 million workers.

Steve holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Boston University, where he studied economics, philosophy and mathematics. His academic work has focused on fiscal policy, and his writing has been published in the American Economic Journal, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and RealClearMarkets.

Dan Katz is a co-founder and portfolio manager at Amberwave. Dan served as a senior advisor at the United States Department of the Treasury from September 2019 to January 2021, where he helped lead the Treasury’s efforts to rescue the U.S. aviation industry during the COVID-19 recession. Dan served as the Chairman of the National Security Loan Program Credit Committee and a member of the Airline Loan Program Credit Committee, which collectively oversaw more than $20 billion of emergency loan transactions. Dan also oversaw the implementation of the Payroll Support Program, which supported hundreds of thousands of jobs in the aviation industry.

Earlier in Dan’s career, he worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He also served as a policy advisor at Treasury, where he focused on financial threats to U.S. national security, and as an advisor to the commander of U.S. forces in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dan holds a B.A. from Yale College and a J.D. magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from New York University School of Law.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

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Album art photo taken by Mike Ando. Please see https://www.mikeando.com/

Thank you to @mathewpassy (on Twitter) for the show production.

Detailed Show Notes

2:48 - What is JSG Investing?

9:05 - Sanctions & their mechanisms

16:33 - Commodities

21:03 - Knowing your supply chain exposure

25:48 - How is JSG measured?

31:14 - The impact of ESG

37:55 - What is “green washing”?

42:58 - Quantitative vs. qualitative

45:03 - Creating growth in the US

48:03 - Shale & energy

49:28 - Working at the US Treasury

56:18 - The cost of time deploying stimulus

57:38 - Moral hazard & airlines

1:07:03 - The “American Recovery Plan” act

1:10:33 - Inflation

1:17:08 - Supply chains

1:20:38 - Asia & semiconductors

1:23:20 - Innovation

1:28:08 - Investing in rural communities

Jobs Security and Growth (JSG) Investing

The Business Brew