Go After ESG Collusion With Antitrust

John Dale Dunn has a post today at the American Thinker that espouses a principle that I have wondered about in these pages. What I have wondered is if BlackRock and other companies could be sued under anti-trust laws. Dunn's post can be found at Does Woke Corporate Policy Violate America's Antitrust Laws?

Chris Talgo at The Heartland Institute asserts that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics have become the bully boy project of the the big Wall Street investment firms and Fortune 500 companies, using trillions of dollars in assets under their control, that are just pension funds and retirement accounts for everyday Americans. Under the law, they have no right to use their fiduciary relationship with investors and savers to push a political agenda — so what gives?

As Mr. Talgo asserts, there is a good legal argument that ESG violates antitrust laws, an argument gaining momentum at the state and federal levels. On December 6, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced that the Committee on the Judiciary will investigate this very matter when the 118th U.S. Congress convenes next month.

The trend for taking care of older Americans after their working years are over has become pensions backed by the various finacial markets whether the stock market, the bond market, or the commodities market. People place a portion of their earnings each month into financial instruments such as 401K accounts with firms like BlackRock and Vanguard. These firms in turn invest with various companies and are supposed to exercise a fiduciary responsibilty in these investments to maximize the return on investors money. 

What has been happening, however, is that they have used the power of the many individual investors to reshape the companies in which they invest using ESG. ESG investing does not, by design, give individual investors the highest return on their investments. QED, it violates the fiduciary responsibility of the investment firms entrusted with persioners' dollars.