Saturday, February 5, 2022
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command...
He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Visage à trois #17
Videos That Are:
- Usually Short.
- Usually Timely.
- Usually Scraped, Gleaned And Pilfered From Social Media.
Visage à trois #15
Woke Capital Won’t Save the Planet—But It Will Crash the Economy
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High inflation and squeezed living standards make it a safe bet that come this time next year, woke capital will be running even faster in the opposite direction.
Judged by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s latest letter, January 2022 might turn out to have been the highwater mark of woke capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is not “woke,” Fink says, because capitalism is driven by mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and their stakeholders. He’s right. What Fink describes is capitalism pure and simple, the stakeholder modifier adding nothing to the uniqueness of capitalism in harnessing competition and innovation for the benefit of all.
Fink’s shift is more than rhetorical. Just three years ago, in his 2019 “Profit and Purpose” letter, Fink told CEOs that the $24 trillion of wealth Millennials expect to inherit from their Boomer parents meant that ESG (environment, social, governance) issues “will be increasingly material to corporate valuations.” Now Fink tells them that “long-term profitability” is the measure by which markets will determine their companies’ success, dumping the ESG valuation metrics he’d previously championed.
Why, then, launch a Center for Stakeholder Capitalism, as BlackRock intends, and not simply a Center for Capitalism? “Your company’s purpose is its north star,” Fink says, echoing the Big Idea of his “Profit & Purpose” letter. BlackRock is the largest shareholder in Unilever. London-based Terry Smith, a top 15 Unilever shareholder, slammed Unilever’s top management for being obsessed with public displays of sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on business fundamentals. In his letter to Fundsmith shareholders, Smith wrote, “a company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot.” Ouch.
The days of woke CEOs criticizing democratically elected politicians for, say, not mandating unisex bathrooms, also seem to be drawing to a close. CEOs should be thoughtful in how they address social issues, Fink says, advising them to show humility and stay grounded. But Fink himself has some way to travel along the humility road. He requires all companies BlackRock invests in to set short-, medium-, and long-term targets for greenhouse gas reductions—as if BlackRock is an enforcement arm of government and net zero is a done deal. “Incumbents need to be clear about their pathway [to] succeeding in a net zero economy,” he writes.
Successful investing—the deployment of capital based on expectations of future returns—is grounded in realism, not make-believe. The failure of last year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow—the summit does not rate a single mention in Fink’s 3,000-word letter—makes it plain to any objective observer that the world will not reach net zero anywhere close to the prescribed date. Forcing companies to conform to a scenario that has virtually no chance of materializing destroys more than shareholder value: it makes all stakeholders worse off. In this respect, ESG investing is antisocial because it is detrimental to society.
ESG investing won’t help the environment, either. Cutting off capital to publicly traded oil and gas companies will not reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Fink knows this. “Any plan that focuses solely on limiting supply and fails to address demand for hydrocarbons will drive up energy prices,” he admits. Congress has not passed legislation to cap demand and is extremely unlikely to do so—a reality he is unwilling to accept.
Three months ago, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers made a stunning intervention when he criticized central bankers for defining themselves by their wokeness, by their social and environmental concerns. “We’re in more danger than we’ve been during my career of losing control of...
Beware Communist Maples, The First Chop Will Be Your Last...
There is trouble in the Forest,
And the Creatures all have fled,
As the Maples scream oppression,
And the Oaks just shake their heads.
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
"These oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
Trees - Rush
Visage à trois #16
Videos That Are:
- Usually Short.
- Usually Timely.
- Usually Scraped, Gleaned And Pilfered From Social Media.
Visage à trois #15
Biden has given blacks the opposite of prosperity, safety and security
The 2020 political cycle was arguably the most divisive in American history. Friends and family withdrew to partisan corners, and decades-long relationships ended. I experienced this myself, as people I knew for years suddenly treated me as a pariah simply for being conservative.
One of my best friends with whom I traveled the world raised money for Joe Biden. We remained close friends when he worked for the Obama administration, but something was different this past election. He ended our friendship over the politics of the moment.
How could this happen? One culprit is the political class, which poisoned our politics. Fostering racial tensions was one of their most potent weapons.
Indeed, the pundits would say if you supported President Donald Trump — or any Republican, for that matter — then you couldn’t support the black community. In fact, you were deemed an enemy of the black race. That was the line drawn in the sand for Americans, especially African Americans, who voted last year.
The elites told us that Biden would protect black people and believe black lives mattered. They also said he would ensure the black community’s prosperity and success. How could anyone back a racist over the savior of black people?
Here’s the problem: The Biden presidency has been the antithesis of black prosperity, black safety and black security.
In June 2020, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that racism was a top issue for voters, especially black Americans. Millions of Americans depended on Biden to be their voice against racism. After all, Biden ran a campaign calling Trump a racist.
However, Biden hasn’t been their voice against racism. Indeed, his son Hunter, the person he said was the smartest man he knows, was caught using the N-word in text messages with his attorney. What’s more, Hunter Biden also used stereotypical language about black people. I spoke about this in great detail on my podcast, “Outloud with Gianno Caldwell.”
Did Biden or his White House speak out against such language used by his son? No. But I can guarantee you that Trump or any Republican whose children were accused of the same thing would have to answer publicly on this matter. The Bidens haven’t, however, and it appears they won’t.
What about the recent immigration policy pushed by the Biden administration? The president has allowed in over a million immigrants from Latin American countries. But the black Haitians who have experienced the assassination of their president, a natural disaster that has crippled their country, and a complete lack of resources due to a dysfunctional government — these are the folks you would think would be great candidates for asylum. Not under...
US Media Outlets Peddle Chinese Propaganda as Genocide Games Begin in Beijing
NYT praises China's pandemic response; NBC presents 'both sides' of Uyghur genocide
China is hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, which means U.S. media coverage of the brutal communist regime is going to be even more credulous and obsequious than usual over the next couple of weeks.
Just as the opening ceremonies were getting underway in Beijing, for example, the New York Times published an article that praises China's authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government's "zero Covid" policy, comprised of strict lockdowns and other acts of state coercion, has been a major success, the Times reports.
How do they know it's been successful? Because China has one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the entire world, according to the Chinese government. The Times concedes that the Chinese data "can be suspect" but insists that China has "almost certainly" done a great job handling the pandemic, even if the official numbers are "artificially low." (China has reported just 3 deaths per million from COVID, compared with almost 2,700 in the United States.)
"China's success at controlling Covid had turned into a public relations triumph for the regime," write reporters David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick. "President Xi Jinping uses China's management of the virus to bolster his global campaign for influence, arguing that China’s system of government works better than Western democracies do."
The article does not mention the origin of the virus (Wuhan) or the Chinese government's initial efforts to downplay the severity of the virus. It does, however, concede that China's containment measures have "disrupt[ed] daily life even more than in other countries," especially the ones that value "individual rights," such as the United States, where citizens are allowed to "disagree vehemently" about government policy.
NBCUniversal, the Comcast subsidiary responsible for producing U.S. coverage of the Olympics, was also quick to peddle Chinese propaganda during the opening ceremonies. Today show coanchor Savannah Guthrie provided credulous commentary on the (alleged) selection of a Uyghur athlete from Xinjiang province to light the Olympic torch.
"This moment is quite provocative. It's a statement from the Chinese president Xi Jinping," said Guthrie. "It is an in-your-face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of [Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang] genocide and diplomatically boycotted these games."
NBC's coverage of the opening ceremonies was marked by a "both sides" approach to China's systematic repression of Uyghur Muslims, which was repeatedly described as merely an allegation leveled by Western countries against the communist regime. "It has to be said that the Chinese government emphatically denies all of...
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