Move over divestment and boycott — and move in activist shareholders wielding other people’s money. After naive shareholders sold out, they didn’t have much influence over a company. But if they bought enough shares instead, they could practically run the place.
Good people left their money unguarded in pension plans and it came to be used against them.
The three largest asset managers in the world are BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. They swept up the retirement money left unwatched in accounts Big-Government forced everyone to have. The Big Three now manage $20 trillion dollars combined. They also happen to want to end fossil fuel use and save the world — because they are nice people, right. So we face the dilemma — The citizens rejected NetZero, but the citizen’s money gives the power to men like Larry Fink, head of Blackrock, to harrass the boards of oil and energy companies in order to get NetZero through the back door.
To appreciate how influential these monster funds are, ponder that they are the largest shareholders in nine out of ten of the S&P 500 Index companies and lately, they have been buying up US power utilities.
These funds joined the climate activist clubs (like GFANZ), and made their political ambitions clear. Despite that screaming potential conflict-of-interest, the government agency that was meant to stop this sort thing (FERC) gave special approval instead. Apparently BlackRock and Vanguard were allowed to buy as much as 20% of some public utilities if they just promised to be “passive” investors who didn’t use their shares to influence management. Who needs fences, just ask the fox not to eat the chickens OK?
Imagine if someone managing a galactic-blob of money made decisions about your energy grid, and what your electricity will cost, and you got no say in it? Government by Oligarchs? They won’t care what your electricity bill is.
The US State governments are the best hope for the West. Last month 13 US State Attorney’s raised the alarm. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Vanguard dropped out of GFANZ?
This is how we win. But it’s just the start of this battle. This is one facet of the dark bubble driving the madness.
State AGs Sound the Alarm About BlackRock, Vanguard Buying Large Stakes in Utilities
Kevin Stocklin, Epoch Times
Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman says he doesn’t want Larry Fink to ‘be my emperor’
The acquisition by investment managers BlackRock and Vanguard of ever-increasing shares in America’s public utility companies is setting off alarm bells from conservatives and progressives alike.
In November, 13 state attorneys general petitioned FERC to deny Vanguard’s request. Claiming that residents of their states could be harmed if utilities are compelled to stop using fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar power, the attorneys general argued that “Vanguard is not entitled to a blanket authorization to acquire substantial equity and voting power in utility companies.”
Influence of the Big Three
“What these activists have figured out is that any radical policy that they can’t get enacted through government can be advanced through corporate America by hijacking trillions of dollars in voting rights from everyday Americans’ retirement accounts,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) stated.
The Senate report further noted that “thanks to the tremendous scale of the savings entrusted with them, the Big Three together cast around one-quarter of all votes at shareholder meetings of most S&P 500 companies …
“These targets come out of the Paris Accord, which couldn’t even get passed through a Democratic Senate,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Epoch Times. “Voters have rejected these net-zero by 2050 goals over and over again. So now we’re seeing this, in my opinion, illegitimate attempt to use corporate America to push these goals.”
This article originally appeared at JoNova