An excellent article, imo, that summarizes the true motivations behind ESG.
I was interested to read that Ramaswamy recently filed paperwork for a presidential run. I suspect he’s too little known to succeed, but he’ll certainly highlight the massive hypocrisy behind corporate ESG and DEI initiatives. More power to him.

I wonder if it’s possible to sue if your pension fund is not trying to maximize ROI. I think this would shut down the ESG market pretty quickly.

I sold a small investment in a large insurance company recently, chiefly because I was fed up with the climate crap on their website. I don’t suppose they notice that I’ve gone, but if my feeling is common to others, it might have some effect.

Comapnies can get slapped with millions in fine for discriminating against black people or failinmg to prevent discrimination.
I am sure that slapping millions on fines for anti white discrimination at Black Rock would make the ESG mob revise their judgement very fast

As the class divide widens all across the Western world so the wealthy become increasingly strident in their campaign to change the subject and divide the opposition to their predations.

The problem with the E in ESG is that many companies such as those in agriculture will actually benefit from increased CO2 in the atmosphere while most companies will be unaffected. To require everyone to treat a 1-2 degree planetary warming in the next century as a short term environment risk to be declared is to compel their management to become virtuous fiction writers.

BlackRock is not a threat to democracy as long as people vote the way BlackRock wants them to.

It’s all completely hypcritical, performative rubbish. Fink is no greener than Dame Emma Thompson or Prince Harry. I have twice been on boards that have moved their fund management from BlackRock; both times they were far more concerned with the appearance of the portfolio than with its actual content. Their stance on ESG is entirely consistent with this.

Larry Fink is Satan’s right hand man, he is evil.

The clue is in the numbers. Actively managed funds charge higher fees than passively managed funds. So the more we minions invest in the passive stuff, the harder it is for the likes of Fink to prosper. ESG is no more and no less than a collection of intellectually flimsy, fashionable, vaguely lefty aspirations. In short, a bit of a con. The news that this tommyrot emerged at the UN surprises me not one bit.

Unelected power is always a threat to individual liberty; sometimes it takes a while to become apparent. John Masko makes a good argument about the power of Blackrock and Larry Fink, BUT, one of the reasons that ESG is popular is that unrestrained, or unguided, capitalism has sometimes been at too high a social cost and/or with unacceptable and/or unintended consequences. A framework is necessary; the question is how to implement it without handing unaccountable power to the framers or regulators.
I do not want to invest directly or through managers in companies which oppress their workers, employ children or are careless of their environment, even if such might well offer the highest RoI. But neither do I want to invest in companies which restrain free speech, or interfere in the private lives and beliefs of their employees in the name of social progressiveness.

BBC4 radio ‘Start The Week’ prog this week was 45 mins on Capitalism of which of the 3 guests Martin Wolf is a Woke, Capitalist,Kate Raworth is a believer in all firms being Green Co-Operatives and the third was American Socialist Bernie Saunders .Needless to say the BBC presenter Tom Sutcliffe was just part of the echo chamber.

Clearly this manipulation will reliably, and predictably deliver returns in sectors that directly benefit from ESG driven investment eg renewable energy, DEI consultancy etc. It would be interesting to assess the corellation between Blackrock’s ROI in those ESG fueled sectors and the growth of ESG investment over the same period. A positive correlation might suggest market manipulation (through the bullying of CEOs) to make ESG investments in those same sectors in which Blackrock already hold substantial long positions.

A powerhouse of a piece from the new guy.

I did see BlackRock begin to slow down in forcing ESG onto companies. Exxon was a target, was required to add green board members but has now ignored any new direction.

ESG = Big Business vs Small Business

Larry Fink and his ilk are probably motivated, in large part, by the idea that if they publicly sign onto large parts of the ‘woke’ agenda, the woke faction (who lean heavily towards socialism) will then ignore their ideological ‘allies’ – who can then get on with the business of transferring an even larger share of everyone‘s wealth into their own pockets.
The woke faction is, of course, too clueless to work this out.

I bet all the push in companies for DEI comes exactly ftom the same place. At the end we are just getting the policies that Blackrock wants not what we asked for.

Find out how “woke” is your fund manage (or your state pension fund). We graded them based on their vote in the Exxon proxy battle (should exxon continue to be an oil company?). Would you believe that Texas state pension funds graded a “D”?? Even worse than BlackRock!!

https://www.insight-esg-energy.com/

I have a simple way to assess the quality of a Company management or it’s prospects.

Get hold of however it expresses its priorities and strategy and ask yourself; is this about winning money at the expense of able competitors, or is it predominantly stuff that nobody will oppose, like having ESG aspirations?

if it’s the former, you have a management that is engaged with the really tough business of persuading people to part with their money in their direction rather than competitors. That’s hard, you’ve got to be smart to pull that off and if they’re doing it well they are people to take notice of. They’ll talk about share, value, growth, investment.

If it’s the latter then you’ve got weak ones who haven’t got the brains or balls for a fight but will set self-appointed simple targets that nobody else is interested in obstructing. They’ll talk about stakeholders, social purpose, etc. They’ll often be conspicuous by making very big shows of their “successes” which they’ll flamboyantly celebrate. Their competitors will let them get on with it, while taking their money off them.

Great article

Go Woke, Go Broke being proved yet again.

Can someone explain why the tech industry had had a bad year in 2022. I had thought covid had given them a huge boost.

This scheme sounds like an excuse to do what elites always do during a collapse which is to funnel all money and wealth to themselves.

I don’t think the author and people here get this at all. Medium term investing is about anticipation, and rarely do you moderate strategies in response to short-term market results. The fact is that world must wean itself off fossil fuels, must bring the welfare of natural capital into its calculations, not only for the sake of the planet we inhabit but to reduce risk. Any fund manager not thinking hard about environmental risk right now is sleep-walking into quicksand – this is mainstream thinking.
While I can’t stand BLM and its derived wokery, if we want our children to live in a better world (and equally to the point, extremely poor children elsewhere) is it not good that powerful investors are prepared to do right by them wherever possible? The article and most comments seem to emerge from a world view in which nothing but money matters (usually their money). Governments need to change business calculations to encourage responsible investment that is also more profitable than the horrendously damaging paradigm it has operated in for the last 200 years. But I’m four-square behind the person who hasn’t the patience to wait for this in a world on the brink, and does everything they can to hasten the day that carbon emissions plunge, nature begins to recover, and poor people have enough food on their plate. Like any top investor, Larry Fink is ahead of the game, and it may not be long before his critics wished they’d got on board and reaped the environmental, societal – and yes – juicy financial rewards to come.

Perfectly encapsulates why any attempt to mitigate the negative affects of climate change quickly meet a brick wall of economic protectionism.
Will this change? Maybe. People now understand the impacts of industrial pollution, resulting in it becoming socially and ethically unacceptable, perhaps the same will happen with carbon emitters, eventually, although it’s too late anyway.
Whether one believes ESG is there only for cynical purposes makes no difference to that goal.