If you talk to capitalism's True Believers, they'll tell you that the magic of "free markets" is their power to aggregate vast quantities of information about the value of products encoded in the purchasing choices of consumers.
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But capitalism's support for free markets is highly selective: capitalists love monopolies, where purchasers are deprived of choices. They love monopsonies, where workers are deprived of choices. And they love regulation, when regulation forces us to buy their stuff.
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Enter the Trump administration, which is poised to make it nearly impossible for you to invest your 401k pension savings in "Environmental, Social, and Governance" (ESG) funds that guarantee you won't be supporting the fossil fuel industry.
sirota.substack.com/p/news-trump-r…
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sirota.substack.com/p/news-trump-r…
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The rule was ghostwritten by Koch-funded thinktanks and has the backing of powerful, hydrocarbon-funded wreckers like the National Assoc of Manufacturers, the North American Coal Company and the Western Energy Alliance.
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Here's how Western Energy describes the case for forcing us to invest our pension savings in fossil fuels: "ESG advocacy has negatively affected the industry’s access to capital over the last few years...
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"The rule will help ensure that activism regarding pension plans does not morph into a halt to investment in the sector that provides nearly 70 percent of American energy."
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Here's @davidsirota's translation: "the climate movement's push to shift investors’ money out of fossil fuel assets and into renewables has been too successful, and so polluters are asking the government to intervene with a special rule to staunch the bleeding."
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Trump's buying it: his SEC will NOT force companies to disclose their climate risk exposure, making it much harder for you to figure out whether your investments are in companies that are rendering the planet unfit for human habitation.
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And THAT means that your fund manager will be violating their fiduciary duty to you to seek the best returns by seeking out non-fossil-fuel investments, and thus will be violating securities law.
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(Ironically, the same forces that back this proposal, also killed Obama's "fiduciary rule" for investment advisors, freeing them to line their pockets with commissions from recommending unsuitable products to you)
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As Sirota points out, forcing fund managers to put your money into the fossil fuel industry is hardly a gift to retirement savers: the industry is in serious trouble, and will never, ever recover.
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