Umm... I finally got around to reading the Daily Beast article itself in order to see if there was more to it than the parts quoted by The Young Turks, the latter being much more extensive than the parts quoted by the original poster here. It turns out The Young Turks did a pretty good job of summarizing, as well as critiquing, the Daily Beast article.
The main information in both is that Stein has most of her money in mutual funds, like the Vanguard Fund and other "index" funds, that is, funds that invest in a wide range of stocks that, collectively, copy the performance of the stock market as a whole. The only investment not in these kinds of funds mentioned in the article was a direct investment on Merck, a pharmaceutical company. Here is what Stein said, as quoted in the Daily Beast article, in response to questions from the Daily Beast:
“Like many Americans who hold retirement accounts, pension funds, or who invest in the American economy, my finances are largely held in index funds or mutual funds over which I have no control in management or decision-making. Sadly, most of these broad investments are as compromised as the American economy—degraded as it is by the fossil-fuel, defense and finance industries.”
The article goes on to say that, while the above statement may be true, she does, in fact, have a choice of investing in "socially responsible" mutual funds try to not invest in, for example, polluting industries, and then provides Stein's answer to that, saying, "Stein said that she has 'explored' more socially responsible funds but 'found their investments in fracking and large-scale biofuels not much better than the non-green funds. I have not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet, and peace.'”
So, echoing Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, I would say that she didn't do much different than most people do who have money to invest and don't want to spend a lot of time going over mutual fund prospectuses to figure out all their holdings. On the other hand, given her position in politics and her world view, she probably should have done more work on it and invested in some of the best of the "socially responsible" funds, even though the returns would be lower.
