Fraud (via ESG and Regulation) Endangers Nest Eggs

As if state governments making politically-motivated investments with money they shouldn't have in the first place weren't bad enough, the New York Post sounds the alarm over a proposal by President Biden to allow retirement fund managers to make investments based on political opinions:

Image by Sean Spicer, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Under the Biden rule, fund managers would no longer be limited to investing workers' assets "solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries," as the law has long required. Instead, they could also "consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select investments and exercise shareholder rights" -- by implication, even if it doesn't maximize returns for workers.

Climate-change and social-justice warriors began pushing companies to adopt ESG practices, and for large shareholders to invest in them, back in the Obama era. But President Donald Trump banned retirement-fund managers from using worker cash for such political purposes. The new Biden rule would override that. [link and formatting in original]

Has anyone heard of individual rights? Of a country of laws and not men?

In what universe is it acceptable to use someone's money to fund political activities without their direct knowledge or consent?

This is obscene.

The Post is right to sound the alarm about politicians arbitrarily deciding that it's okay for an investment manager to abdicate his fiduciary duty to maximize your returns (or, in principle, to invest in causes you care about). But the same paper blows a chance to suggest a real remedy by being less-than-even-handed in the blame.

Trump "banned" this?

How? By executive order? By installing his guys in an unaccountable bureaucracy?

I never recall Trump or anyone from his party explaining what was wrong, or why they had to resort to half-measures like this, or outlining a general strategy to make such changes permanent.

And what happens when then next criminal gang ascends to power? Oh, yeah. We're seeing that now.

How in hell can anybody invest -- for high returns or to help support a cause -- if politicians have the power to dictate fundamental rules governing the stewardship of funds? What happened to the idea of these things being determined -- once and for all, and on our own terms -- by a written contract?

Properly speaking, the sole role the government should have in how we manage our money would be to settle contractual disputes and to protect our rights, from theft, fraud, and breach of contract.

The fact that Biden and his party have salivated over our money for so long is bad enough, but the abject failure of the Republicans to do anything about this other than to pretend to fight it while leaving the means of abuse in place is arguably worse, because at least the Democrats aren't pretending to stand up for us.

Rather than whine about the President's "pen and phone" only when a Democrat holds them, the Republicans should concentrate on making the pen much harder to abuse.

-- CAV