{"id":2391,"date":"2025-10-20T13:58:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcap.blog\/?p=2391"},"modified":"2025-10-20T13:58:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:58:56","slug":"shareholder-spotlight-easterly-investment-partners-lies-losses-and-a-love-for-diesel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tcap.blog\/2025\/10\/20\/shareholder-spotlight-easterly-investment-partners-lies-losses-and-a-love-for-diesel\/","title":{"rendered":"Shareholder Spotlight : Easterly Investment Partners \u2013 Lies, Losses, and a Love for Diesel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When you look at who\u2019s still buying Cummins stock, the pattern\u2019s hard to miss. Easterly Investment Partners \u2013 the same firm accused of inflating municipal bonds and gutting retirees\u2019 savings \u2013 just joined the shareholder list. It\u2019s the kind of company that sees a billion-dollar emissions cheat and calls it an opportunity. In a rigged economy where finance feeds on rot, Easterly fits right in \u2013 gambling with other people\u2019s futures, now and always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ROCMuni Wreckage \u2013 A Fund Built on Lies<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You want to understand Easterly? Start with the ROCMuni High Income Municipal Bond Fund. Marketed as safe, stable, tax-free income \u2013 the sort of thing sold to retirees and cautious savers. Then June 2025 hit, and the bottom fell out. The fund\u2019s value collapsed from $230 million to $17 million in a month. That\u2019s not a dip; that\u2019s financial demolition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawsuits came fast. Investors accuse Easterly and its predecessor adviser, Principal Street Partners, of inflating valuations and stuffing the portfolio with illiquid, high-risk junk while pretending it was solid muni debt. Complaints describe \u201cvirtually unprecedented\u201d losses \u2013 tens of millions wiped from portfolios overnight. Federal filings in New York name Easterly as a central architect in this collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If true, it\u2019s textbook financial fraud \u2013 a quiet con sold with a smile. A fund meant to shelter pensions instead burned them. And these are the same people now buying Cummins stock \u2013 a company fined for poisoning the air. If they can mislead retirees about municipal bonds, why wouldn\u2019t they overlook a diesel cheat\u2019s crimes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brokers, Kickbacks, and the Sales Sleaze<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The rot wasn\u2019t confined to Easterly\u2019s boardroom. Broker-dealers like Osaic, Janney Montgomery Scott, and Stifel are now under fire for allegedly shoving the fund down clients\u2019 throats. FINRA complaints describe a sales culture built on commissions and deception \u2013 advisers pushing speculative sludge on pensioners because it paid better than honesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investor-protection firms like Iorio Law and Haselkorn & Thibaut are probing whether those brokers knowingly sold toxic bonds disguised as safe havens. It\u2019s the same pattern you see everywhere: overhyped product, underinformed buyer, broker pockets the fee, client eats the loss. It\u2019s the moral twin of Cummins\u2019 own con \u2013 sell clean engines that choke the world, call it innovation, and cash the cheque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before the ROCMuni collapse, Easterly\u2019s affiliate, Easterly Securities, had faced arbitration over murky fundraising. Settled quietly. The culture\u2019s clear: keep the lights on by any means. It\u2019s less an investment house than a casino with a dress code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Cummins Connection \u2013 Profiting from Poison<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, Easterly opened a fresh position in Cummins Inc., scooping up roughly 3,300 shares worth $1 million. Not massive, but meaningful \u2013 a signal that they see profit in pollution. Cummins, after all, is still staggering from that record-breaking $1.675 billion environmental fine for rigging nearly a million diesel engines. Trucks tuned to fake clean emissions while pumping out toxins. A global chokehold wrapped in corporate spin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Easterly would buy into that mess is no surprise. It\u2019s the same instinct that drove them to flog junk bonds to pensioners: short-term returns, long-term ruin. They don\u2019t invest in ethics; they invest in loopholes. Cummins sells the myth of \u201cdecarbonisation through diesel\u201d. Easterly buys the myth, bottles it, and sells it to anyone still gullible enough to believe in \u201cvalue investing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their holding might only be 0.078 percent of their portfolio, but it\u2019s symbolic. It\u2019s the handshake between Wall Street and smokestack \u2013 the financiers who fund the polluters, then pretend to be shocked when the air turns to poison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Pattern of Rot<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Easterly\u2019s defenders will call ROCMuni an isolated failure, the Cummins stake a \u201cstrategic diversification\u201d. But the truth\u2019s uglier. The firm was among over 130 companies grilled by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2024 for its role in ESG-related hypocrisy \u2013 a paper-green crowd talking sustainability while financing sludge. Nothing came of it, of course. The foxes still run the henhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019ve issued no apology to burned investors. No public soul-searching. Just the same hollow language about \u201cstewardship\u201d and \u201cpartnership\u201d. It\u2019s the language of rot \u2013 polite, precise, and utterly indifferent to consequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Verdict<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Easterly Investment Partners is not an aberration; it\u2019s the blueprint. Overvalue the assets, underplay the risk, pretend it\u2019s strategy. When it collapses, move on. And when the next polluter needs funding, buy in early and call it insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cummins finds investors like Easterly because they speak the same language \u2013 profit first, accountability never. The diesel keeps burning, the air keeps thickening, and the money keeps flowing. The rest of us? We\u2019re left coughing in the margins of their spreadsheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They call it diversification. TCAP calls it complicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n