{"id":45767,"date":"2023-06-29T11:06:39","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T15:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/?p=45767"},"modified":"2023-06-29T11:14:29","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T15:14:29","slug":"scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Shepard: Larry Fink Abandons Failed “ESG” Phrasing for ESG Phrasing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Larry Fink is \u201cashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/a>

Scott Shepard<\/p><\/div>\n

Quite right, you may respond. But this being Larry Fink, he\u2019s not ashamed of what he\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be ashamed of. He\u2019s not ashamed of misusing other people\u2019s assets to push his own personal policy preferences. He\u2019s not ashamed of lying to CEOs, shareholders, investors, pension fund managers, investigators and the public about the partisan nature of his endeavors. He\u2019s not ashamed of leaving his mansion in a limo to take his private jet to the top of the world in the middle of the winter to stay in a well-heated luxury hotel to devise plans for forcing the\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>\u00a0like us to reduce our carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

No, he\u2019s \u201cashamed<\/a>\u201d to have to participate in a\u00a0debate<\/em>\u00a0about ESG, which he has\u00a0claimed<\/a>, and has rightly been dismantled for claiming, is somehow neither woke nor partisan. He claims this despite the fact that his ESG-forcing efforts \u2013 efforts that see him forcing on private companies the same two programs of political decarbonization and equity-based discrimination \u2013 are the whole-of-government efforts of the Biden Administration. He thereby makes a fool of himself.<\/p>\n

He’s ashamed that he had to debate and lose, rather than simply having his commandments respected as holy writ. And so he\u2019s no longer going to use the term ESG. He\u2019s switched, he says, to the phrase \u201cconscientious capitalism.\u201d After all, none of us dirty peasants can question anything he says he is doing conscientiously, can we?<\/p>\n

Well, probably we can.<\/p>\n

You see, Larry doesn\u2019t have any intention of changing any of his behavior at all. Instead, he explained, “we [will continue to] talk a lot about decarbonization, we talk a lot about governance \u2026 or social issues, if that’s something we need to addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cconscientious capitalism\u201d is going to be just the same as ESG, and Fink and BlackRock are going to proceed just as they have been behaving. Decarbonization on political schedules, just like before? Check. Pushing \u201csocial issues\u201d like equity-based discrimination and the other hard-left social policies that this \u201clifelong Democrat\u201d and his company have proudly \u201cforce[d]\u201d on companies where it invests other people\u2019s money? Check.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason that Fink is trying a new phrase is because the public and state officials and regulators have come to understand what ESG really means on the ground, and have finally begun to respond properly. So what the hell, try a new label. Of course, this ignores the fact that Fink and his co-conspirators have already tried \u201cstakeholder capitalism,\u201d only to be caught out by the simple demonstration that there is no such thing as acting in the interests of\u00a0all<\/em> stakeholders at the same time, thus giving the lie to that attempted misdirection.<\/p>\n

And this new moniker will be torn up just as quickly. Is it conscientious for billionaires \u2013 who on average use\u00a0one million times\u00a0<\/em>as much carbon as the rest of us \u2013 to demand that we use still less while they live on high? Is it conscientious for billionaires of immense power who have made their way in the world by dint of their effort and their merit, without discrimination, to demand that others who look and love like them submit to new regimes of race, sex and orientation discrimination in part\u00a0because\u00a0<\/em>the discriminators are themselves straight white guys with immense wealth and power?<\/p>\n

No, of course it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s reprehensible, contemptible.<\/p>\n

So why this rebranding effort, which is doomed to fail from the start?<\/p>\n

Well, BlackRock (and State Street and Vanguard) has both regular and ESG-labeled investments, and in his\u00a0letter to investors<\/a>\u00a0this year, Fink highlighted that he offered both options as part of his claim not to be running BlackRock according to his personal policy preferences. But then he spoke exclusively about the investments that gave him clear license to use those assets to push those policy preferences \u2013 in this case, political-schedule decarbonization. And in many, many other venues, he and other BlackRock executives have bragged that the company uses\u00a0all<\/em> the assets entrusted with the company (not just the ESG-labeled ones) to push the twin ESG goals of political decarbonization and equity-based discrimination.<\/p>\n

This change in terminology, then, is an attempt to get Fink out of a bind. It\u2019s straightforward material misinformation to offer regular and ESG-labeled investment options, but then to use the assets from both categories to push ESG goals. Now Fink\u2019s instead going to call those same goals \u201cconscientious capitalism\u201d targets, hoping that the change in terminology will solve his problem.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t, of course. He\u2019s already admitted that the only thing that\u2019s changed is the term, not his intended behavior. And so this new phraseology only adds an extra layer of intentional misrepresentation, and eventual peril.<\/p>\n

This obfuscation will fail too, Larry. It\u2019s just woke in Fink\u2019s clothing.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Scott Shepard<\/a> is a fellow at the\u00a0<\/em>National Center for Public Policy Research<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and Director of its\u00a0<\/em>Free Enterprise Project<\/em><\/a>. This first appeared at RealClearMarkets<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Fink is \u201cashamed.\u201d Quite right, you may respond. But this being Larry Fink, he\u2019s not ashamed of what he\u00a0should\u00a0be ashamed of. He\u2019s not ashamed of misusing other people\u2019s assets to push his own personal policy preferences. He\u2019s not ashamed of lying to CEOs, shareholders,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":45771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,30,655],"tags":[712],"yoast_head":"\nScott Shepard: Larry Fink Abandons Failed "ESG" Phrasing for ESG Phrasing - The National Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scott Shepard\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Scott Shepard\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/#\/schema\/person\/dc73621a207a331b5cd4560d771417b7\"},\"headline\":\"Scott Shepard: Larry Fink Abandons Failed “ESG” Phrasing for ESG Phrasing\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-29T15:06:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-29T15:14:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\"},\"wordCount\":862,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Larry-Fink-pondering-1.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"FEP Commentary\"],\"articleSection\":[\"BLK\",\"Free Enterprise Project\",\"Published Commentaries\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\",\"name\":\"Scott Shepard: Larry Fink Abandons Failed \\\"ESG\\\" Phrasing for ESG Phrasing - The National Center\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Larry-Fink-pondering-1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-29T15:06:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-29T15:14:29+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/ncppr\/2023\/06\/29\/scott-shepard-larry-fink-abandons-failed-esg-phrasing-for-esg-phrasing\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Larry-Fink-pondering-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Larry-Fink-pondering-1.jpg\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":630,\"caption\":\"Laurence D. 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