1) WSJ Spotlights Our Victory Over ESG

We just released our third annual report on proxy shareholder voting by the big banks and money managers. We grade the firms based on which are abiding by their fiduciary duty to get the best return for their clients, and which are voting for ESG initiatives, including climate change, disinvestment in fossil fuels, racial preferences, etc.  

Good news: since we started calling out these firms, the share of yes votes for ESG has fallen in half - from 60% to 30%.  Next year we hope to get this down to close to zero.  Here is the WSJ coverage of the study:

The economic analysts at Unleash Prosperity have been tracking investment votes on corporate proxy proposals for several years, and the trend keeps getting better. In 2022, when it first tracked the votes, most of the largest investment firms danced to the tune of environmental, social and governance proposals. By 2024 most of the firms had taken a notably different approach to ESG.

The nearby table shows the latest Unleash Prosperity rating for 40 of the top funds. The grades measure how well the funds determine their proxy votes based on what really matters for corporate governance, which is the growth and profitability of the firm in the interests of maximum return for shareholders.

The full 2025 edition of our Pension Politics report is available here:

2) 86% of All Inflation Since 2020 Was Under Biden

Several HOTLINE readers have asked us how much of the inflation rise is due to the Biden presidency.  

We went back to January 2020 when the pandemic started. We found that 13.5% of cumulative inflation (prices are 24% higher today) has happened under Trump, while 86.5 percent of cumulative inflation happened under Biden.

So the "affordability crisis" is the hangover effect of Bidenomics when the White House dumped some $4 trillion of helicopter money out the windows.

Thanks, Joe.

3) Will UBS Become Union Bank of the States?

Speaking of big banks, we have reported before that UBS is thinking of bolting if Switzerland imposes bank capital requirements similar to what our own Federal Reserve floated under Biden appointee Vice Chairman Michael Barr.

Now, the Financial Times reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is laying out the red carpet:

UBS chair Colm Kelleher and US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent have privately discussed moving the bank's headquarters to the US, as the Zurich-based lender explores contingency plans to leave Switzerland if the government does not back down on new capital rules.

Kelleher and Bessent held talks in recent months about what a move to the US would look like for the lender, with the Trump administration receptive to welcoming one of Switzerland's most prized assets, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

It’s pretty sad when banks have to come to the U.S. for regulatory relief. We assume the Swiss will ultimately be smart enough to avoid this scenario. But if not, our advice to UBS: yes, come to the USA, but stay away from New York and California!

4) Seattle Askew

We reported the day after the elections that Seattle voters had rejected a socialist mayor. But then all the mail-in ballots were counted and Katie Wilson, a 43-year-old community organizer who is still partially supported by her parents, eked out a victory with 50.4% of the vote.

Ms. Wilson is already acting like a dictatorial policy diva. In her first post-election speech she proclaimed: "We will not allow grocery chains to close stores at will" - even in unprofitable, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

The same day she led a parade of strikers in a boycott of Starbucks, a company founded in Seattle and which has 87 stores there. What a way to improve the local business climate!

The Washington Post predicts that both Wilson and Zohran Mamdani in New York will provide coast-to-coast "real-time experiments in radical governance." The biggest difference may be that Wilson could fail faster and further. The Post notes she has "even less experience than New York's Zohran Mamdani" and has worked only at "odd jobs."

Wilson's proposed tax hikes are even more expansive than Mamdani's and include a local capital gains tax, a digital advertising tax and a wealth tax. Seattle already has absurdly high taxes and an office vacancy rate above 33%.

How sad that our once-great metropolises have become experiments in socialism and massive tax hikes. Has Ms. Wilson ever heard of the Laffer Curve?  Has she ever employed anyone? Has she had a real job?

Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle now have turned into worker paradises - or some utopian dream. It worked for Havana, so it’s sure to work here.

Postscript, if you think we’re exaggerating about how wacko Mayor-elect Wilson is, get a load of these qualifications for her cabinet:

5) We Need Civic Education To Make a Comeback

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was President Trump's first Supreme Court appointee in 2017, has been an exemplary champion of individual rights and adherence to the Constitution.  

But he has long worried that public support for those concepts is being undermined by the collapse of civic education in America. We do an especially horrible job teaching children the principles of the Founding Fathers and the structure of a free society.

A recent Cato Institute poll found that 65% of 18-to-29 year olds didn't know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Maybe that explains why 53 percent of Gen Z respondents also support writing a new U.S. Constitution. It's easy to want to scrap something when you don't even know what value there is in it.

So Gorsuch has written a new children's book called The Heroes of 1776. It takes readers on a journey through the harrowing stories of the Founding Fathers and the lesser-known patriots of the Revolutionary War.

Recently, Gorsuch was asked about a quote from his book that reads: "The Constitution established the first modern republic in which people rule themselves ..." He explained that the United States was founded on "three 'radical' ideas: that we're all created equal, that we have unalienable rights that come to us from God [and] not from government, and that we the people have a right to rule ourselves."

But Gorsuch worries that too many today take those ideas for granted. He notes that "Thomas Jefferson said an ignorant people will never remain free for long, and he's right. We need to know our history in order to preserve it."

"If you ask me what the greatest danger America faces today, it's itself," he continued. "We have to learn how to talk to one another. We need to know our shared history, and I think if we do that, we'll come to realize that all the things that separate us pale in comparison to the things that unite us."

Gorsuch's works make clear the urgent need for school choice programs that might help restore a sense of American exceptionalism has never been greater.

6) Obamacare Explained

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