Lisa Benson for January 31, 2023

ESG rules are not for every company. Investors are free to choose at their discretion to invest in any company that chooses ESG guidelines – or not.

But when fund managers use investors money to push their ESG ideology, then that not good. When it lowers the fund returns, then investors need to pack up and find another fund that puts their interests first. Or stay with the lower returns so they feel warm and fuzzy.

I’m guessing: 401k managers devesting petroleum =bad

OK! Who told the Conservative Cartoonists that simply allowing 401K Funds to invest in ESG stocks would be THE END OF THE WORLD! They’re all gaga about something they know nothing about – other than it reverses something Trump liked. Trump also likes hamberders. So what?

Could it be that Benson, after riding in an elevator with Kudlow at Trump University, thinks she’s an expert in Investing?

Republicans love money, but not the poor and the sick.

Joek doesn’t care, he’s set with his China & Ukraine money laundering schemes.

Terrence Keeley, a former executive at BlackRock, blew the whistle on this scam in the Wall Street Journal by noting that since 2017, when the ESG fad took hold, these funds have had an annual rate of return of 6.3% — versus 8.9% for the stock market as a whole. Investors lost 2.6% per year on their retirement funds. There goes the down payment on that retirement home in Arizona or Florida.

What is insidious about the new Biden administration ESG rules is that they permit and even tacitly encourage portfolio managers at firms such as BlackRock to violate their fiduciary duty to their clients by allowing ESG factors to trump sound investment decisions. Federal regulators are supposed to be ensuring the soundness of retirement funds, not shrinking them.

To make matters worse, researchers at Columbia University and the London School of Economics found ESG funds may not even be achieving their goals. The study compared the ESG records of American companies in 147 ESG fund portfolios to ones in over 2,000 non-ESG portfolios and found that the ESG companies were often worse when it came to labor and environmental law compliance.

The good news is that there is a backlash emerging against ESG. Late last year, one of the largest money managers, Vanguard, wisely announced it was withdrawing from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a major climate change alliance.

Going forward, ESG investment policies should be illegal unless individual investors check the box to have their money invested in such politically motivated investments.

By the way, victims of the law policies are often unionized workers — America’s truckers, factory workers and teachers — whose lifetime savings are put at risk.

Bravo to Vanguard for pulling out of the ESG scam. If you’ve invested your money with BlackRock or State Street, you might want to ask why they haven’t done the same. – Stephen Moore, Taki’s Magazine

They have to deflect from the fact that the Republicans are coming for your Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats are in charge of egg prices now?

Lisa was absolutely livid that the stock market tripled in value while Obama was president.

She much preferred the fiscal responsibility of Bush/Cheney.

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Lisa is another one who actually believes that tax cuts for the wealthy benefit her personally.

Maybe Lisa would be happy here in Indiana, a state run by a GOP supermajority “legislature”; one of the most polluted states in the US; a state with the dirtiest steel plants and oil refineries in the country; a state where coal generates most of its power and leaking coal ash storage sites pollute water and air with carcinogens and heavy metals; a state where environmental protection, resource conservation, and public health legislation proposals go to die.

ESG is most definitely not coming from the right. Governors and AG’s in republican led states have been taking steps to keep ESG scores out of state- funded pensions. This is pushed by the DAVOS crowd (Wordl Economic Forum) and people like Klaus Scwab of Blackrock, who said by 2030 “you will own nothing and be happy”. He’s referring to you and me, not himself or the other elites. They’ll still have plenty. BTW, Blackrock people are all over the Biden cabinet and administration.

Yeah…trust GOP instead(~!!!) ( Remember ‘08, when Rush Limbaugh called it "the Obama recession? [For those who don’t remember, Obama had not yet taken office!] You’re in good company, L B!)

For the greater good as determined by the Democrat’s masters in China!

Gods forbid we should be interested in caring for the earth. Or is that, GOPs forbid?

The government calling winners and losers in a ‘free-market’. In other words…“You will invest in the companies we approve so we can make a bigger personal profit on your contributions”

Lisa, no one has a gun against their head to force them to invest. Investors can “just say no.”