This week giant fund manager, Vanguard, quit the net zero climate alliance, a group set up to impose a ‘woke’ political agenda on the rest of us.
Good. But what on earth was Vanguard doing signing up to this alliance in the first place? How many of Vanguard’s clients, I wonder, signed up to have their funds used to advance a social agenda?
What is ESG investing – and what we can do about it in Mississippi
Unknown to millions of Americans, many of Wall Street’s biggest fund firms have in recent years been using their financial muscle to insist that businesses they invest in adopt a social agenda. This is sometimes referred to as ESG (or Environmental, Social and Governance) investing.
ESG investing means not only signing up to a commitment to reach net zero emission targets, but also adopting radical leftist ideology in the name of equity and inclusion. What the radical left could not achieve via the ballot box they have come close to achieving via a thousand corporate HR departments.
Vanguard pulling out of this climate alliance shows is that ‘woke’ corporations can be beaten. What conservatives do at a state level is proving critical in that fight.
Gov Ron DeSantis has already shown in Florida that local states can put pressure on ‘woke’ Wall Street. Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we are working on legislation to limit ESG investing in our state in a way that is consistent with free market principles.
I am delighted that Mississippi’s state Treasurer, David McRae, has taken such a strong stance, too.
Why, I often wonder, do so many institutions go ‘woke’ in the first place? It’s not only pressure from ‘woke’ fund firms that is the problem.
When an institution, be it a fund manager, or an ivy league university or a museum, has enormous prestige and a vast amount of money, perhaps it no longer has to strive daily to keep its customers happy?
In an organization flush with cash, even the most mediocre managers can look better than they actually are. Perhaps, too, when an institution starts to promote people on the basis of something than competence, the institution risks being run by the incompetent?
I suspect that the markets, more than politicians, will eventually cause a massive correction in ESG investing - and in time in many of our ‘woke’ institutions.
