A package of bills to ensure employee benefits plans prioritize financial well-being over “woke” policies has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Outgoing Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Good sponsored the Protecting Americans’ Investments from Woke Policies Act and the No Discrimination in My Benefits Act, which cleared the House 217-206.
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BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.”
The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals.
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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ceremonially signed a measure mandating the state’s retirement system to consider only “pecuniary factors” when making investment decisions.
H.3690, the ESG Pension Protection Act, effectively bans the South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission from weighing environmental, social and governance factors and orders the system to maximize the highest rate of return for beneficiaries. The state House passed the measure by a 103-5 margin, while the state Senate passed it 45-0.
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American companies are reversing the multiyear trend of hiring more employees in roles related to environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues in an effort to increase profitability and address investor pushback, according to The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. companies shed 3,071 employees with positions related to ESG in December while only adding 2,897, continuing the trend that has been seen in half of the months in the last year of a net loss of ESG positions, according to the WSJ. The shift is in response to investors pulling their funds from companies heavily involved in ESG practices and placing their money in firms where they can get higher returns.
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Bill Ackman, the highly successful investor and Harvard graduate whose criticism of Claudine Gay’s history of plagiarism led to her resignation as President of Harvard University, published a lengthy tweet on his X account Saturday evening responding to an article about him published by The Washington Post earlier in the day, “How a liberal billionaire became America’s leading anti-DEI crusader.”
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Trust in banks has plummeted. From 2019-2022, the percentage of people who believe banks and financial institutions have a positive effect on the country fell among Republicans (from 63 to 38 percent) and Independents (by nine points). The problem grows every time a right-of-center group is debanked. Recognizing the problem, “rebuilding trust” is the theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The path to rebuild trust in finance is simple—keep politics out of banking.
In spite of an alleged priority of building trust, the largest banks are aligning themselves with radical United Nations (UN) climate initiatives linked to radical efforts to reduce Africa’s population and destroy Sri Lankan agriculture.
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