Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #1035
06/07/2024, 06/08/2024, 06/09/2024
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1) WE’RE Winning and ESG Is Losing
This story in the Financial Times signals a major victory in our crusade at CTUP against woke investing:
“Investors have withdrawn a net total of $40 billion from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) equity funds so far this year as poor performance, a series of scandals, and attacks from U.S. Republicans hit enthusiasm for a much-hyped sector that has pulled in trillions of dollars of assets."
Here are two charts that document this retreat that started in 2022.
Wow, this is a big deal for two reasons. First, it shows that ESG has become a toxic term – like Bud Light – and companies are rightly backing away from a fad that puts political biases ahead of sound financial judgments.
Second, just as we’ve been saying for three years now - and we were heavily criticized for saying it - ESG is a money-loser for investors. Investment dollars aren’t being steered to companies based on their profitability but for some ephemeral commitment to saving the planet or social justice.
The pullback from ESG investing has even reached Europe, the strategy’s traditional stronghold, where ESG equity fund outflows were a net $1.9bn in April.
Pierre-Yves Gauthier, head of strategy and co-founder at AlphaValue, a Paris-based independent research company, tells the FT that “the ESG sector is like the dot.com bubble hype that burst in 2000. “
This map of party control of state legislatures 50 years ago blew us away. In 1975, Democrats set the record for partisan control of state legislatures in the wake of the Republican/Nixon Watergate disaster. There were only four states where Republicans controlled the House and Senate. Ironically, one of them was Vermont – perhaps the most liberal state in the country today.
What is especially striking was the South was solidly Democratic all the way from South Carolina west to Oklahoma. These were the Jim Crow-era Democrats.
Now compare that map to this one for 2023:
This is almost an exact reversal. The South is now solidly red and the coastal states of the Northeast and the West Coast account for the few remaining strongholds for the Democrats.
The other striking feature is that as the South has become redder, its economic growth has correspondingly exploded in most of these States down in Dixie.
We've said many times that the polling data is less meaningful than the betting markets, which are the best measure of where the race stands.
On the one hand, right now it is Trump over Biden, about 53% to 37%!
BUT, this means it's Trump at 53% and the rest of the Democrat field at over 45%. There is at least a 15% chance that Biden won't be the nominee.
We think the odds are higher than that given the decline in Biden's cognitive abilities and the panic among Democratic politicos, as we discussed yesterday. We view Biden as less formidable than nearly any other plausible replacement - weaker even than Kamala. Kamala is no Golden Knight who would ride to the rescue, but in our opinion is underestimated by the Republicans.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom or Michigan Governor Whitmer -- or even Michelle Obama, who is popular with gamblers -- could be formidable.
4) Latinos Are the Primary Victim of Radical Climate Change Policies
A new reporton Latinos in California by Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy, finds that many Latinos work in what report prime author Soledad Ursua labels "the carbon economy."
They are employed in factories, logistics, agriculture, and construction, all fields that are now declining or stagnating in the state. Much of this can be traced to the state’s draconian climate policies, which work against any field where reliable, affordable energy is a prerequisite.
Under the deep blue (or should we say green) Newsom regime, the steps up the ladder to the middle class are being sawed off.
Latino home ownership is stifled by high housing prices, another product of the Golden State’s climate and regulatory policies. Again the state comparisons are brutal.
Latino homeownership rates are 59.2% in Texas, 55.4% in Florida, and over 70% in New Mexico. California, on the other hand, posted a Latino or Latino homeownership rate of 45 percent, 41st nationwide.
Latino voters don’t care about climate change – which is the sandbox of the ultra-rich. Liberals have lost touch with one of their primary constituencies.
5) Director James Cameron Rails Against Despoiling Nature, but Now Backs Huge Building Project
Hollywood director James Cameron is devoting the rest of his career to his radical leftist “Avatar” film series.
The movies depict how a pristine ecosystem is despoiled by “settlers” and applaud the “indigenous resistance” fighting them.
Now, Cameron is facing fierce local "indigenous" resistance to his support for a giant $1 billion film studio and training center in the pastoral British countryside. “The 22.5% of the total global box office the U.K. delivered in 2023 will grow as a result,” he wrote in a pitch for the project. “But embracing that opportunity necessitates support and boldness in thinking.”
Boldness means development – which is what the films are against. Green activists claim Cameron’s project “would forever destroy” the local “green belt” and be “detrimental to the people living in the area, destroying their quality of life by being surrounded and trapped by the industrial-scale development.” Polls show that those Brits living in the area – the “indigenous population” oppose the project by at least a 4 to 1 margin.
Maybe Avatar 5, 6, 7, or 8 will be about the greedy capitalist steamrollering over the residents.
