19 AG's sue anti-energy finance company
A group of 19 Republican Attorneys General led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson have threatened the $10 trillion hedge fund BlackRock with antitrust legal action in an Aug. 4 letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink accusing the company of “intentionally restrain[ing] and harm[ing] the competitiveness of the energy markets” with its market dominance of retirement investments.
Brnovich and Peterson added, “coordinated conduct with other financial institutions to impose net-zero [carbon emissions by 2050] … raises antitrust concerns. Group boycotts, restraining trade, or concerted refusals to deal, ‘clearly run afoul of’ Section 1 of the Sherman Act [according to the Supreme Court]. Section 1 prohibits ‘[e]very … combination … , or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce.’ Regarding the definition of a ‘combination,’ the Supreme Court has held that this language prohibits ‘concerted action.’”
Those are fighting words. Here, Brnovich, Peterson and the other GOP Attorneys General lay out a case that BlackRock’s push for net zero carbon emissions, through its coordinated efforts with investment banks via Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds to restrict the flow of capital to carbon-based energies like oil and coal, are engaged in a type of anticompetitive collusion prohibited by federal antitrust laws.
ESG investing has increased dramatically in the past two decades via private retirement funds regulated under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) thanks to a regulation by the Obama Labor Department in 2015 allowing ESG investments into tax-exempt retirement savings accounts, and also by individually directed tax-free retirement accounts. A 2020 regulation by the Trump administration to water that down was promptly overturned by the Biden Administration.
In addition, the $762 billion federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for federal employee retirees began investing in ESG funds in 2022, following state government employee retirement funds in California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland and Oregon.
As a result, ESG is said to be worth $41 trillion this year globally, and $50 trillion by 2025, about one-third of all assets under management, according to Bloomberg.
U.S. corporations appear to be all in on BlackRock’s investing scam, with a recent KPMG survey finding 82 percent of U.S. corporations are touting ESG sustainability goals in their corporate filings. I’d add, even though doing so by no means guarantees inclusion in hedge funds’ ESG funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.
In other words, ESG investing is so successful in shifting companies to the stakeholder capitalism model that companies are adopting ESG goals of their own accord — in mere hopes of getting some that investment money by virtue signaling — without necessarily even boosting their companies’ capitalization. It’s like trying to boost your odds of winning the lottery by promoting the lottery. It doesn’t quite work that way.
In the meantime, Brnovich and Peterson are absolutely correct that BlackRock’s ESG-driven focus on net zero carbon is absolutely strangling U.S. energy production through pressure on corporate firms.
According to EIA, U.S. oil production will reach 12 million barrels per day in 2022 and 12.6 million barrels per day in 2023, not quite a return to pre-Covid production levels that peaked at 12.9 million barrels per day in Nov. 2019. Why? Because America’s largest energy companies appear to be purposely unprepared to expand production even in the middle of a global energy shortage. The proper investments were never made.
...
The environmental wackos are a threat to the US economy and to US national security. Their attempt to throttle the market for energy production in the US is a clear and present danger to transportation and manufacturing in this country. They appear to be in violation of US laws.
Comments
Post a Comment