patrick.net

But what did Blackrock in particular do to get control over so much pension money?

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/late-stage-legal-plunder

(former AB exec Anson Frericks) said BlackRock, Vanguard, and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital and use their clout to promote agenda politics being pushed on them by progressive lawmakers overseeing government pension funds that the companies profit from.

One of the firms manages California’s pension fund — the largest in the country — and California politicians can have a big say in the corporate governance and politicking of the firms they invest so heavily in, he added.

“In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas, and then when Bill de Blasio, [former] mayor of New York, was there, he did the same thing,” he said.

“But they also tell BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard if they’re going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America.”

I doubt that anyone is telling Blackrock to do anything.

It think is Blackrock, by which I mean Larry Fink, who is deciding.

https://babylonbee.com/news/lululemon-employees-fired-for-not-offering-to-help-looters-bag-clothes-and-load-them-into-their-car



One of Blackrock's goal seems to be the elimination of brick-and-mortar retail so that we are all dependent on Amazon, a single point of control.

As of two years ago, I now indirectly work for Blackrock. They bought my company with a few billion they had lying around.
This contract season is going to be interesting…

@Shaman It would be very interesting to hear what you find out about them.

https://thegloriousamerican.com/featured/hasbro-pressured-to-add-small-accessory-to-all-mrs-potato-head-sets-6-6-23/



This is the kind of thing Blackrock has been forcing companies to do via control over pension fund voting rights.

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

zzyzzx says

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

Over 80% of BLK is held by institutions, that is over 120 million shares.

zzyzzx says

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

I that someone's name is Warrent Buffet he could probably pull it off. Otherwise no cigar.

zzyzzx says

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

I like this idea!

Even one shareholder speaking out at the meeting would be a big win.

Patrick says

zzyzzx says

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

I like this idea!

Even one shareholder speaking out at the meeting would be a big win.

It's only $680 and change.

Patrick says

What's "sex-sex couples"?

Eric Holder says

Patrick says

What's "sex-sex couples"?

are you sure you want to know?

https://babylonbee.com/news/hell-celebrates-yet-another-year-of-perfect-esg-scores

https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1671262303319392259

Patrick says

https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1671262303319392259

I have $10K - sell me a senator!

https://notthebee.com/article/black-rock-ceo-larry-fink-says-that-hes-dropping-the-term-esg-because-ron-desantis-has-killed-the-brand-

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says that he's dropping the term "ESG" because leaders like Ron DeSantis have killed the brand

Larry Fink (yes, his real name is Fink) is the CEO of BlackRock investing and he has even recently admitted that his ESG plot is designed to force corporations to adopt woke leftist policies against their will.

He's changing the ESG branding because, according to him, it's been made political:

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he's no longer using the term "ESG" (environment, social and governance) because it is being politically "weaponized" and he's "ashamed" to be part of the debate on the issue.

Yes, the dude who wants to force companies to follow the woke cult or suffer thinks that the opposition to ESG has been weaponized.

So he's doing the same thing, but calling it something different and thinking that nobody will notice.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/good-riddance-esg-200637182.html

Woke is walking.

Larry Fink, CEO of investing giant BlackRock, said he’ll no longer be using the buzzphrase “ESG,” which stands for environmental, social, and governmental factors when evaluating companies to invest in. ESG investing gained some popularity in recent years as a set of non-financial metrics to help guide conscientious investors toward ethical companies and away from malfeasant ones.

Supporters argue that ESG investing, while fostering a clear conscience, also generates superior returns.

Yet like any do-gooder effort these days, ESG investing also produced a politicized backlash, mostly from conservatives protesting liberal overreach, or the “woke mind virus,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likes to say. Fink says the term and the concept of ESG have been “totally weaponized” and “misused by the far left and the far right.” Fink has been a leading proponent of ESG investing, so his about-face may mark the beginning of the end of this socially conscious trend.

I’m shedding no tears. ESG investing may have been worth a shot, but it has turned out to be counterproductive, outdated, and ineffective. For one thing, research suggests ESG investing might produce higher short-term returns only because the trendiness of it leads to more short-term demand for certain ESGish tickers. Over the long term, ESG returns are nothing special.

Markets should also do what markets are good at, which is maximizing profits and efficiency. Other institutions should regulate pollution rules, police corporate governance, enforce the rights of all minority groups, and pursue the other goals of ESG investing. There’s never a bright line delineating where the market ends and government begins, and the ESG movement has been a kind of trial-and-error effort to move those lines a little bit, which is fine. But the experiment failed. Here is how each leg of ESG investing flopped.

Environmental:

The biggest push along this axis has been the movement to disinvest in fossil fuel companies. Be careful what you ask for. Guess who benefits when free-market economies start to move away from oil and natural gas: Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other unsavory oil-producing nations that don’t care about ESG values. This played out in stark fashion last year when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine and energy prices soared, producing a windfall for Russia to use to finance its war. Here in the United States, enviro-president Joe Biden faced a huge political problem as gasoline prices skyrocketed to $5 per gallon. The ultimate irony was Biden, a green-energy acolyte, begged US drillers to produce more oil. Everybody forgot that most of the US and world economies still run on fossil fuels.

The ESG mindset on energy is binary: Renewables are good and fossil fuels are bad — get rid of fossil fuels as fast as possible. This is completely disconnected from what’s happening in the world and even from the best-case scenario for green-energy adoption. The world will need a lot of oil and natural gas for decades, and gas is even a crucial “base load” fuel that will allow the faster adoption of renewables. Pressure to disinvest in companies that produce vital commodities we depend on today is foolish. The better approach is a steady transition from one to the other without jumping so fast you cause self-defeating shortages.

....

Social:

Who sets the rules for what is socially acceptable behavior at publicly owned companies? This is obviously a minefield for CEOs, with the recent Bud Light fiasco showing that outreach to one group can enrage other subsets of customers. ESG investors want to favor companies demonstrating the most tolerance toward the widest group of people, which is laudable. Maybe just do not do it through your portfolio?

...

Governance:

Aren’t investors supposed to take account of corporate governance as a matter of course, and not as some special side venture? Isn’t that why we have a whole elaborate set of reporting requirements governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission? What more do you need? Again, this is a bit of a guise meant to assure favored companies do the right thing, whatever the right thing is. If you doubt the effectiveness of plain-old corporate governance, watch what happens to a company’s stock when it discloses it has received a Wells Notice or files an 8-K report providing notice of some accounting irregularity.

...

https://blackrockvanguardwatch.com/

Blackrock and/or Vanguard are among the three largest institutional investors for 505 out of 505 of the S&P 500. (100%)
One or the other is the single largest institutional investor in 422 of these. (84%)