Posted on 11/08/2023 10:24:34 PM PST by thegagline
***[T]he ESG movement, which pushed big investors and money management firms to consider progressive environmental responsibility, social justice issues and corporate governance policies when making investments and voting shares at stockholder meetings.
This is a legitimate, if not necessarily successful, investment strategy for the individual investor. Still, it creates conflicts for large asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street which — until the onset of the Biden administration, at least — the law and convention dictated should consider only the need to generate the maximum return on investment possible for their clients when making investment decisions.
*** Eventually, investors pushed back. In a significant win for the American free-market movement, states such as Texas, Florida and South Carolina began to enact restrictions on how state funds under their control could be handled, ensuring that the responsibility to generate maximum returns was the only thing affecting investment decisions.
The pushback worked. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink went on Fox Business to announce he would no longer use the term ESG “because it had been rendered toxic in too many quarters.” Later, he told the Wall Street Journal’s Gerry Baker on the “Free Expression” podcast, “Everything we do is on behalf of our clients, and everything we do is with the purpose of financial returns. There is not one thing we have ever done, whether it’s ESG or any other issue, that is not in the pursuit of financial return.”
***
BlackRock reports that its support at annual meetings for so-called social justice resolutions has dropped from 47 percent to 22 percent to 7 percent over three years. The same is true for Vanguard, which backed only 2 percent of environmental and social resolutions compared to 12 percent in 2022. ***
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
It was never about “investing”. It was about funneling money to the globalists and controlling finances in every company in the West.
FOS investing!
Burn [domestic gas and oil] baby, burn [domestic gas and oil]...
And yet, the SEC is still moving forward with “climate disclosure” rules, the EU still has ESG regulations, energy prices are still being manipulated with required purchases of indulgences.... and so on.
The new rules helped impede the effort, for example, by environmentalists to win support for motions at big bank shareholder meetings that would block future investments and loans needed to construct new natural gas pipelines, develop deep water oil exploration sites, and build up the infrastructure of the conventional energy industry.
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Good article and finally some common sense from financial institutions that should’ve ditched this stupidity years ago.
The war on the energy sector being waged by the environmental industrial complex and their political allies should be a bigger topic on Free Republic.
These charlatans have been trying for years to leverage the financial sector into stopping the financing of the energy sector, while siphoning off credit for their unproductive green fantasies.
One of the most disgusting displays on this issue was when Congress brought in some of the big bankers to testify at a hearing four or five years ago.
The “squad type” democrats were wanting action on climate change, diversity in hiring, student debt forgiveness, defunding of gun manufacturers, defunding of energy producers, etc.
You know what some of the Republican jokers wanted to talk about? “Cyber Security”
Fortunately, some Representatives from Texas & Louisiana who didn’t have their heads up their asses, blasted these ludicrous views & the hearing wasn’t a complete bust.
Fink is Evil. He is deeply behind the Great Reset, Globalist Power Grab.
These 2 video’s expose some of their influence. Multiple other sources have helped illuminate this Globalist Scam. Catherine Austin Fitts, Dr. David Martin, Dr. Robert W. Malone, etc.
Episode 449 - How BlackRock Conquered the World (Sep 19, 2023)
https://www.corbettreport.com/blackrock/
How To Defeat BlackRock - #SolutionsWatch (Sep 21, 2023)
https://www.corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-blackrock/
The government demanded they do this the companies complied and the investors said Im out of here if you do, end of story.
Bfl
Coming from The Hill, this is a surprisingly realistic view of ESG investing. In reality, it’s hard to decide which is worse: pouring dollar bills down the toilet, or investing in ESG. I believe the latter gets rid of money faster.
Liberals simply don’t understand how wealth is created: Wealth is created when the value of producing something is higher than the cost of producing it. ESG produces nothing.
It was failed attempt by the profit seeking global coroprate world to secure a viable place in the Marxist world we are heading for.
I think what’s happened here is that ESG investors themselves finally realized how stupid they are. It’s one thing to be virtue-signaling with other people’s money, but when you can only invest your own money in worthless assets for so long before you finally decide you aren’t going to be the fool in the market anymore.
I want investments that are profit driven, not virtue signalling.
Larry, you are still a Rat Fink. No conservative trusts anything you say.
Most Leftists NEVER ‘realize’ how stupid they are. They have to have it shoved down their throat. That’s why academics can live out their entire career without “realizing how stupid they are”. There’s no one around to do the shoving.
I agree, though, that investment advisors can quickly find that their ‘investments’ go sour, though they will also blame external events.
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