It’s never a good idea to go on CNBC and point out even just a few tiny flaws in our wonderful capitalist system.

Equity research analyst Ronnie Moas tried this last week, and here’s happened: The show’s host insinuated he was having a nervous breakdown; He received anonymous death threats; He lost tens of thousands of dollars in business as some clients became outraged and dropped his service; He got pasted with labels and trash-talked in the media. Watch the interview.

“His research report is a lot of baloney — and could be financially dangerous to investors,” a Jan. 12 story in the New York Post opined.

The words of Moas, founder of Miami-based Standpoint Research, were never called “financially dangerous” before. His research boasts top rankings from briefing.com, Yahoo Finance and Motley Fool. He says his time-stamped stock recommendations have bested the Standard & Poor’s 500 more than 69% of the time since 2008. He sells his research mostly to hedge funds and institutional investors who profit from the advice.

“I am not a communist, socialist or anti-conservative,” Moas said in a telephone interview.

He has simply reached a point where he can no longer take the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor and all the exploitation that comes with it. He is sick of people valuing money and objects over human beings. He is sick of large corporations that grossly underpay their workers and sometimes even poison their customers.

To justify blatant and destructive selfishness by calling it capitalism is absurd. So he spoke up.

He made his point by putting out a research note that blacklisted three companies — Apple AAPL, -3.17% , Amazon AMZN, -1.78% and Phillip Morris PM, -1.74% — on “moral and ethical grounds.”

Then he got on cable TV and said things about these companies that have been said for years. But somehow, when an analyst says it, and puts out an accompanying “sell” recommendation, some people just freak out.

Moas merely noted: Phillip Morris sells a product that kills people; Apple pays contract workers in China so little they have been committing suicide; Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos sits on a $27 billion fortune while his warehouse workers suffer low pay and unfair working conditions.

Read Al’s column on suicides at Apple factories; He died for our gadgets

Demolition Raids Target China's Polluting Factories

Moas said there are hundreds of other companies he could blacklist on moral and ethical grounds — including McDonald’s MCD, -1.03% and Wal-Mart WMT, -1.02% — but he started with what he found among the more extreme cases.

He said he never planned to go further with this campaign. He just wanted to take his one-time shot at a greedy world that both enriches and frustrates him as a businessman. He is, however, scheduled to appear on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and Fox Business this week to discuss what he’s done. So the blowback is likely to rage on.

“I may end up getting blacklisted,” he said, “driving my business into the toilet, but I knew that could happen. I feel like I am doing the right thing.”

Moas is not one of these analysts who constantly glues his eyes to a battery of screens, drooling over tiny bits of data about money. He travels the world and sees how others live. He looks at causes and effects, globally, and wishes others could see the world as he sees it.

There should always be a gap between rich and poor, he concedes. It just shouldn’t be so wide it destroys people. To Moas mind, anyone driving a $200,000 car ought to be doing more for the employees who helped generate these riches, as well as the people who caught a bad break in life simply because of where they were born.

Moas is a bright guy who developed a 155-variable computer model to generate investment ideas. He doesn’t just rely on numbers. Fundamental analysis and subjective thinking round out his calls.

He has never before applied “moral and ethical grounds” to his stock picks, though. Such variables probably have little effect on the short-term performances of stocks. Since his blacklisting, Apple and Amazon shares are up slightly, and Phillip Morris is a bit down.

At least he will not approach his grave knowing that he never took a stand for what he knows is right.

“I feel like 80% to 90% of the people are behind me,” Moas said. “But the damage that the other 10% to 20% can do to me can’t be underestimated, many of whom are in my industry.”

They’ll point out that Apple brought us the iPhone, Amazon delivers cheap goods to our doorsteps, and if anyone is stupid enough to smoke cigarettes, that’s not really Phillip Morris’ problem, is it?

Many good people will continue to look the other way because that’s what good people so often do.

Maybe one day they will open their eyes. Or maybe they won’t. Meantime, Moas is taking a beating for saying things people should have learned in kindergarten.

“I just want more focus on ethics, morals and the poor,” he said, “and less on material things that are not nearly as important and valuable as people think.”

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