Free Republic

The House Judiciary Committee is probing whether the firms' environmental, social, and governance standards violated anti-trust laws.. he House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors in its investigation into whether their adoption of environmental, social and governance standards violated U.S. anti-trust laws. The committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is probing whether the two investment managers entered into collusive agreements to decarbonize their assets under management and reach net zero emissions by 2050 in ways that could violate anti-competitive laws. The committee issued the subpoena on Friday, claiming that the documents handed over by both firms...

International Man: With nearly $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM), BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. The company exploded in size after the 2008 financial crisis, and that’s no coincidence. Central banks around the world have printed scores of trillions since then. A significant portion of that freshly created money eventually found its way into the stock market, specifically BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs). BlackRock was also responsible for helping the Federal Reserve manage its massive debt portfolio after 2008. It’s another indication of BlackRock’s cozy relationship with the government. BlackRock is a good illustration of the Cantillon Effect—those...

The Vanguard Group, one of the world’s largest asset managers, invests in Chinese military groups and companies linked to forced labor through index funds, a new report says. The report comes as the Treasury Department finalizes the rules pertaining to a White House executive order prohibiting certain outbound investments to China.Vanguard’s $70 billion flagship emerging markets index fund includes 60 companies on the Chinese military company sanction list by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the U.S. Department of Treasury, according to the report released by the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) on Oct. 13. CPA is...

Index providers, Western managers face growing pressure over Chinese investments.. The report by the Coalition for a Prosperous America said a Vanguard fund has put money into companies sanctioned by the U.S. government over alleged human rights abuses.. HONG KONG -- Top index fund manager Vanguard has invested in scores of Chinese companies that have links to the nation's military or have been sanctioned by the U.S. government over alleged human rights abuses, according to research by a bipartisan U.S. group. The $98.7 billion Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund has invested in the subsidiaries of 60 companies that are...

Here, Vanguard, et al are doing for real what Stalin and the USSR were accused of doing. Except it is all of Ukraine that is being “liquidated” – physically, and before the eyes of the world. When people talk about “Ukrainian grain” they’re actually talking about grain that is now owned by US and EU mega-corporations such as Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. Several large US pension funds, foundations, and university endowments are also invested in Ukrainian land through...

We have been denied access to our accounts at vanguard. A message telling us to call them, can’t call on weekends. Anyone else having trouble getting to their accounts??

The Vanguard Group has joined fellow investment giant BlackRock in drastically reducing the number of projects it plans to fund that are under the environmental, social, and corporate governance umbrella. BlackRock, the world's largest money manager, reported a massive scale-back in ESG-related backings in late August 2023, according to the Epoch Times. The group said that it has recently backed about 7% of ESG proposals at company meetings the last 12 months leading up to June 2023. In 2022, that number was 22%, and in 2021 the company reportedly voted in favor of nearly half of all ESG proposals. For...

A 12-year-old student in Colorado was allegedly kicked out of class for wearing a Gadsden flag patch after being told by the school that the flag has “origins with slavery and slave trade.” A viral video on X (the social platform previously known as Twitter) shows 12-year-old Jaiden from The Vanguard School in Colorado Springs being condemned by a school administrator for wearing a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. The video, which appears to be recorded by Jaime’s mother, outlines the school’s incoherent reasons for removing Jaiden from his class and asking for the patch to be removed. “The...

Survivors of the Maui fire say that they received no warning and that the flames appeared so quickly that escape was difficult. Everything was suddenly in flames and many found refuge in the ocean for hours while their homes burned to the ground and into the same powdery ash footprint we’ve seen in recent years. So far, it is estimated that nearly a thousand people have died. Locals are worried this includes hundreds of children who were home due to school being canceled that day. Several people are reporting that the government is not only doing little to help but...

Making good pancakes is one of the easiest processes; however, you need just the right ingredients. Consider this recipe next time:2 large eggs1 1/4 cups whole milk4 tablespoons melted butter1/4 teaspoon salt1 3/4 cups flour2 teaspoons baking powder1 tablespoon sugarIt stinks that the better option is to communicate like this; alas, sometimes it is necessary simply to avoid the Eye of Sauron – Google. Which is really the reason for writing this.Our tech overlords really do not like CTH for several reasons, and they put blocks in the internet path in order to make things more difficult.The two primary reasons...

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday sent letters to several asset managers and climate organizations over potential antitrust violations related to "decarbonization" agreements between firms as part of a larger investigative inquiry into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices in the financial sector. ESG investing is the practice of using investor capital to advance non-financial goals, among them those outlined in ESG initiatives. Conservative critics have contended that the practice may constitute a breach of an asset manager's fiduciary duties to its investors. The Judiciary Committee in June issued a subpoena to climate group Ceres over a concern that its...

No quote from Bloomberg allowed, store here.

House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan and two other House Republicans sent four letters to the heads of massive companies such as BlackRock and Vanguard, calling on them to explain corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts that could violate federal antitrust laws. The Daily Caller first obtained copies of the letters, which were sent Thursday to the heads of Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. Jordan was joined by Republican North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop and Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. In all of the letters, the lawmakers say the companies appear to...

A new report released by Vanguard shows the average account balance in retirement contribution plans dropped by 20 percent from 2021 to 2022. Vanguard’s report found that the average account balance for its defined contribution plans was $112,572 in 2022, down nearly $30,000 from the average in 2021. The report noted that 1 in 3 account holders had a balance of less than $10,000, about 25 percent had a balance of more than $100,000 and 12 percent had a balance of $250,000 or more. The report attributed the drop in average balances to “market performance and an evolving participant base.”...

Woke governance that has sent profits spiraling at companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target often begins with lefty investment firms pressuring them to push products their way, an ex-top Anheuser-Busch exec said. ... Anson Frericks said behind-the-scenes politicking from firms like New York-based BlackRock and Pennsylvania-based Vanguard spur many of the controversial decisions sparking nationwide boycotts from longtime more conservative customers — such as the ill-fated Bud Light promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney He said BlackRock, Vanguard, and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital and use their clout to promote agenda politics being pushed on them...

The tide is turning against woke agendas in corporate America. Just recently , Vanguard’s CEO Tim Buckley announced that his investment firm - the largest or second largest in the world (depending on how you measure it) - will no longer be committed to Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) or other “net-zero” initiatives. “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing,” he said in a recent interview. This comes after Buckley had previously withdrawn Vanguard from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. This initiative, which garnered $59 trillion in commitments from corporations around the...

Vanguard 1, designed by my father, was launched 65 years ago. I talked about it on The John Batchelor Show. https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/06-dec-2017/broadcast-3030-hotel-mars-richard-easton

A clip of a histrionic Russell Brand on Real Time with Bill Maher went viral on Saturday—in which the comedian, who owns multiple multi-million-dollar homes, accused political analyst and fellow guest John Heilemann of hypocrisy for criticizing Fox News from “within the castle of MSNBC.” In the two-minute clip, a shouting Brand maintained that MSNBC was fundamentally no different from Fox News. All this, he loudly insisted, contrasts with the “real journalism” of National Security Agency consultant-turned-Russian defector Edward Snowden and former RT host Julian Assange. Talking over Heilemann’s attempts to answer his criticism, Brand asserted that both channels are...

Republican lawmakers who railed against “woke capitalism” in the 2022 midterm elections have taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from some of the same Wall Street money managers they have attacked for pushing what the GOP calls “far-left” positions on environmental, social and corporate governance issues. Conservative activists have been pressuring Republicans to wield their new power in the House to block corporations and executives that use their influence to promote ESG plans such as clean energy investments or corporate policies that support abortion rights or LGBTQ rights, among other issues. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the influential...

ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s premature abandonment of coverage of the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio may have been a gambit to protect the leftist pro-environment, social, governance (ESG) standard giants tied to the incident. A recent MRC study revealed that the Big Three broadcast network’s morning and evening news shows all but dropped coverage of the Ohio disaster once residents were permitted to return home Feb. 8. Between the incident’s genesis on Feb. 3 and the evacuation order for East Palestine being lifted on Feb. 8, all six shows fell just shy of spending a combined 30 minutes on...