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By Jo Nova
Oklahoma blacklists BlackRock and 12 other banks that boycott fossil fuels
We may yet be saved by states in the US that are pulling the pin on the Big Banker Cartel. In this case Oklahoma wrote laws to investigate and ban state investments with banks that boycott the energy sector. They’ve now decided that 13 banks fail the bar, and should be banned from all public business. In response BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are now dancing to a whole new tune, suddenly protesting that they invest billions in the energy sector. The twisted truth is, that it is no defense at all, it was part of their strategy. Often they used their major voting interest to oust directors and pressure boards to pick up more “woke” ESG policies. These are big targets. JP Morgan Chase is the largest bank in the US and BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world.
This is excellent news, and we need more. Spread the news. But how did it get to the point where a bank that outspokenly campaigned to end fossil fuels was managing 60% of the state employees retirement funds in a state that is […]
By Jo Nova
Environmental wokeness has become a liability for investors
The backlash against ESG has hit bonds, stocks, corporates
In a recent survey, half of large investors in North America now admit to worrying that ESG exposes them to legal risk. When companies want to create a Green-Woke project they issue ESG bonds to get loans to build it, but sometime between last year and this year those Bonds have halved. Suddenly companies are not dressing up in the Big Green cloak. That’s $6 billion in ESG investments that didn’t happen.
The change in direction has been driven by Florida and Texas and the 19 or more states that have joined them. Even though the $2b in funds Ron De Santis pulled from BlackRock et al last year was a drop in the ocean for a $10 trillion dollar fund, it was the tip of a spear at the heart of the beast. The financial houses and asset managers were using other people’s money to force through political changes those same people didn’t want to vote for. If the crowd followed De Santis the whole game was up.
De Santis has just tightened the screws further today:
DeSantis […]
By Jo Nova
SVB or Silicon Valley Bank is the US’s 17th biggest bank, or it was until last week when it became the US’s second biggest bank failure instead.
Interest rate rises are supposed to squeeze out the dumbest investments, so it is fitting that one of the first casualties of this boom-bust cycle is a green banker, mostly doomed by loaning half their cash to the same bankrupt Big-Government that created the green improbable fantasy industries which SVB was largely serving.
SVB was a “Green” Banker. We know this, not because newspapers are saying that now, but because of the emergency flares released on behalf of the victims. The New York Times tells us that the collapse of SVB is going to hit green tech hard because SVB clients included 1,550 companies dedicated to “fighting climate change”.
If only SVB had served coal miners or gas frackers instead they might still be in business? The deposits they needed would have kept on coming as the profits flowed in.
David Gelles, New York Times, naturally, misses the whole point:
Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Threatens Climate Start-Ups
In reality, climate start-ups threaten the bank, and climate finish-ups threaten […]
By Jo Nova
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. | Bloomberg
Two wins. BlackRock has agreed to Ron DeSantis’ demands that Florida’s state pension funds can’t be used for eco-activism fantasy quests (like ESG*). Now they have to be used to make profits for the people those funds belong to. That’s not much of a win you might think, since that’s just a return to “the world we thought we were living in”, but in the World of Absurd it’s popping a very important bubble. Possibly “the” most important bubble — the loose money driving the trainwreck of stupid investments and sabotage-like-boycotts.
Secondly — Larry Fink feels hurt. The glitter-wheels are falling off the climate fund-wagon. The CEO of BlackRock was running around the world acting like the third largest nation on Earth. He was waving ten trillion dollars of other people’s money and bossing people into joining his cult. That party is coming undone.
BlackRock are the financial Climate Police disguised as a Monster Investment Fund but the anti-woke movement is gaining ground:
BlackRock’s Fink says climate and ESG-investing attacks getting ugly, personal
By Rachel Koning Beals, MorningStar
By Jo Nova
Hands up who wants to lose money?
These numbers that Rupert Darwall has put together in Real Clear Energy are extraordinary:
2022: The Year ESG Fell to Earth
The year 2022 brings an end to an era of illusions: … [it] brought environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing down to earth with a thump—for the year to date, BlackRock’s ESG Screened S&P 500 ETF lost 22.2% of its value, and the S&P 500 Energy Sector Index rose 54.0%.
Ponder how savagely poignant these losses are for the ESG doe-eyed investors. In their wildest wet dreams ten years ago they would have crawled over shards of glass naked to get coal prices up to $400USD a ton. In a year when coal and gas were obscenely expensive, the glorious cheap efficiency of solar and wind power could shine like never before.
Instead demand for fashionable random green electrons vanished. There was never a need for “random” power, and the energy crisis just peeled back the onion to reveal the true demand. Wind and solar power were just the fashion accessories that no one had to have. Coal, oil and gas were essential.
Not only did demand […]
By Jo Nova
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.
[…]
By Jo Nova Vanguard abandons the UN led Net-Zero Climate Finance monster group
Only a week after Ron de Santis pulled $2 billion in Florida funds from BlackRock, Vanguard, the second biggest asset manager in the world, has abruptly pulled out of GFANZ.
Vanguard has $7 trillion in assets under management, and GFANZ is a conglomerate cabal of bankers insurers and asset managers that has snowballed into a 550 member cabal with a jawdropping, obscene, 150 trillion in assets. Together, for a moment, they almost created the illusion of a One World Government by Bankers. After all, the GDP of the United States of America is only $23 trillion. So when an organization with six times the pulling power tells the world to go Net Zero, which company, which government would say “No”? Well, Ron de Santis did — and 18 other US states are working on it too.
The key weakness to the $150,000 billion dollar GFANZ monster is — as I said last week — that it’s an illusion. They are wielding other people’s money — using their clients own pension funds to indirectly punish their own clients, and the good guys […]
Good News: The best hope of unwinding the unholy alliance between Big-Money and Big-Government comes from the US States and they are starting to sink their teeth in.
BlackRock is the defacto Global Climate Police — but disguised as a monster investment fund. The way to break it is to expose that its primary interest is not in making money for its clients but as a Woke political tool.
BlackRock are able to intimidate most of the world with $10 trillion dollars in assets. They are effectively the third biggest “country” in the world by GDP. But it’s an illusion. They are wielding other people’s money — using their clients own pension funds to indirectly punish their own clients. And once those clients figure it out and pull their funds, BlackRock will become an empty shell. Couldn’t happen to a nicer company…
It’s a scam where BlackRock target legal corporations in states that voted to use fossil fuels to effectively undo what the voters wanted. A few months ago, 19 States in the USA started asking BlackRock and the US SEC some hot and hard legal questions. West Virginia announced they would boycott firms that boycott fossil fuels, and […]
By Jo Nova
The would be King-Emperors of the world don’t just want to transform energy and change the weather, they also want to rebuild the entire financial system, no doubt to put the UN at the centre of the rivers of money.
Make no mistake, the lauded “loss and damages” fantasy plan was but a shiny bauble to distract you. The bigger ambit is to get the West to pay for the whole world to become a solar and windmill paradise and — “obviously” that means they have to rebuild the entire world’s financial system. (They actually say that).
Consider the numbers: The combined loss and damages claim for 55 countries over twenty years amounts to just $525 billion or a paltry $26 billion a year. But building all the useless renewable farms will supposedly require at least USD 4-6 trillion a year in investments.
Sensible investors will notice that it is 200 times as expensive to try to control the weather with windmills as it is to pay for all the current (theoretical) damage. Sadly, nobody is talking about sensible investments.
The UN announcement comes dressed up in a headline about the paltry Christmas fantasy payments to […]
by Jo Nova Banks suddenly threaten to abandon the Glasgow GFANZ “climate action” group
It was the massive miracle-funding coalition of Glasgow but it is already starting to unravel as the banks figure out that conspiring to force “climate action” puts them at risk of antitrust suits.
A month ago I wrote that 19 US States were pointing out that it’s not OK for asset managers like BlackRock and co to join together in cartels to block investment in fossil fuels. These corporations bragged about belonging to groups like GFANZ (the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero) as if it made them into saintly environmentalists. But belonging to the group meant they are also effectively restraining trade, reducing competition and acting against the interests of their clients and against the wishes of voters.
Don’t underestimate how important this is or how ugly these monster cartels are: GFANZ has attracted some 500 members which control $130 trillion in assets. But the carbon targets they are told to aim for are set by the UN through something called the Race-To-Zero campaign. So this is a quasi World Government in cahoots with world bankers. Like a Great White Shark meets a pod […]
Finally 19 US States are hitting back at BlackRock the financial behemoth, and not a day too soon.
A light in the tunnel…
Americasroof
By a pure dollar reckoning, BlackRock is the third largest “foreign entity” in the world, after the USA and China, but its core business, its reason for existing is a contradiction: it claims to be an asset manager but acts like a political power. With neither citizens, land nor an army, it’s a kind of toxic financial bubble on a roll — part illusion, but still swallowing economies, minds and electricity grids.
BlackRock is supposedly investing funds on behalf of its customers while using those same funds to promote Woke political agendas that its management may like, but that its own customers may disagree with. It’s a totalitarian force that consumes democratic choices by force of money. Finally some state legislators are calling out the contradiction. Does BlackRock serve its customers or “the management of BlackRock”?
BlackRock is enormous, but it’s not untouchable, and if retirees and State pension plans pulled their money and filed writs for breaches of law, the activist-agency could vanish overnight. BlackRock has $10 trillion in assets to wield […]
Hopefully Elon Musk will give him a job.
Stuart Kirk, head of “responsible investing” for HSBC let rip at the doommongers of finance with a speech called “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”. He was speaking at A Moral Money Europe Summit, held by the Financial Times and is clearly fed up with listening to hyperbole and being told to analyze and worry about trivial long term future events. “Last night Target fell 25% — twentyfive!” … but I’m being told to worry about something coming 20 – 30 years down the track.” Other speakers were unceremoniously dispatched. He complained climate risk has become so hyperbolic no one knows how to outdo it. “Sharon [a speaker from Deloittes] said “we’re not going to survive!” But no one even looked up and ran from the room.”
Dangerously (for him) he also explained how the central banker models bury massive GDP and interest rate shocks in their economic forecasts of climate risk, otherwise they can’t generate bad news and headlines. Apparently, it’s all in the fine print that nobody mentions. They’re sounding more and more like climate models all the time.
That was last week. This week he’s been suspended.
[…]
So much for stranded assets then.
Is there any better proof that “believing” in climate action is just a fashion statement? For all the talk of the end of fossil fuels, the biggest and most powerful funds in the world sign up for their “Net Zero” clubs but pour money into oil, gas and coal, hither thither, anyway.
The 30 biggest funds in the world manage €42.5 trillion in assets. These funds are so big, they can move markets if they want too…
Soak in that hypocrisy
Larry Fink starred at Davos and other events pontification for years on the importance of “tackling climate change”, how it’s an investment risk, and on how “climate change will upend” the way we do business, and how we need to do “long termism“. But he’s the CEO of BlackRock, the largest asset management fund in the world and they don’t mind at all they profit from all the fossil fuels. They joined the Net Zero Asset Manager Alliance, but do almost nothing. Indeed, vocalizing about what bad investments fossil fuels are while investing in them, is like a reverse pump and dump. They’re just scaring off the competition.
In 2020 BlackRock virtuously promised […]
Hands Up: It’s Net Zero now or a 1.5% interest rate hike?
So Australia is adopting Net Zero because the Global Financiers, who only want to save the world, would have refused to lend us money without jacking up our interest rates by 1.5%. The banker punishment would have meant a “17% investor exodus”. Fancy a stock market collapse?
This remarkable admission comes in the modeling released today by the Morrison government. No one is even trying to hide it.
At least we can stop pretending this has anything to do with science or the voters. Just cut out the IPCC and go straight for the BlackRock Temperature Tax, eh?
Note the “penalties” are imposed by global financiers:
Modelling shows real cost of no net-zero carbon emissions
Greg Brown and Geoff Chambers, The Australian
Businesses and households would have faced interest rate hikes of up to 1.5 per cent under expected penalties imposed by global financiers if the government had failed to adopt net zero emissions by 2050, modelling for the Glasgow climate package shows.
The penalty regime would have sparked a 17 per cent investment collapse by the middle of the next decade, […]
By Joanne Nova
Shut down Australia and save 0.01 degrees.
Scott Morrison will spend $120 billion of our money on technology because it might solve a problem that a foreign unelected, unaudited committee says we need to solve. So we’ll spent $120 billion on a plan to change the weather on Planet Earth. But we won’t spend one thousandth of that to independently check what the committee says. Almost all the climate scientists who support the IPCC decision are ones whose income increases if they find a crisis.
All the people finding flaws are volunteers, or about-to-be volunteers involuntarily.
Scott Morrison’s $120bn new-tech plunge to hit net zero
The Australian
Scott Morrison has unveiled a “middle path” for Australia to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 which promises dramatic carbon reductions across the electricity and transport sectors and a massive investment of up to $120bn for emerging technologies to help achieve the Glasgow target.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday announced the government’s 126-page plan, promising it would not cause massive job losses and disruption to the regions and that Australians would be better off by $2000 on average by 2050 compared to taking […]
Hello Nuclear Subs means Hello Net Zero Targets?
HMS Ambush
As I suspected, the whole Net Zero witchcraft push is being driven by our defense partners, and has nothing much to do with Australian voters. That explains why the government that won The Climate Election with a skeptical stance are now pushing blindly for “Net Zero targets”. It also explains why the public debate has shifted since the AUKUS deal just in time for Glasgow and has no content, apart from the insistence that we don’t want to be “left behind” in some global fashion race to wreck our electricity infrastructure faster than everyone else. Kudos to The Nationals who are still trying to respond to both The Voters, and the Science. Send them your support.
With this admission from inside Cabinet, we see that the AUKUS sub deal was probably quietly loaded with a climate deal too. If you want our subs, and our protection, you need to obey the carbon cult. Translated — “the Western Alliance” means nuclear subs from the US and UK. The veil is pulled back on the illusion of Democracy.
So now it’s “Build solar farms, and windmills, sign up for carbon […]
Who voted for Superannuation funds to decide energy policy?
And you thought we elected a government to manage our National energy policy?
Businesses must adopt Paris emissions targets even if the government fails to do so, big investors say.
The Guardian
So even if voters don’t want “climate action”, by default, it’s sneaking in the back door, unless they pay attention.
The “big investors” in this case being a small team of activists running a club that some Superannuation corporates have joined, though it’s not clear why. Perhaps they joined to “look Woke” or perhaps they are feeding the crocodile for fear of being targeted?
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) is not trying to persuade funds or investors to go Green with reason, instead they seem to operate by Cancel Culture principles on a corporate scale. Their aim, apparently, is to bully Directors of your Superfund into themselves bullying the companies they invest in. In a Saul Alinsky fashion they effectively threaten Directors that they might be personally isolated and targeted if they are not seen to be supportive enough of the Woke religion (ie, climate, slavery, femo-glass-ceiling stuff). Somehow ACSI may “recommend members […]
Because Big Bankers really want to save the Earth, right?
BlackRock, the 10 trillion dollar “global investment fund” is urging the Australian company AGL to shut Bayswater and Loy B Yang Coal Plants much sooner than planned. BlackRock is a NY based and as wikipedia says “Due to its power, and the sheer size and scope of its financial assets and activities, BlackRock has been called the world’s largest shadow bank.”
The move only got 20% support from investors. Australian investors largely said “no thanks”. Where are The Greens in exposing multinational powers that want to influence Australia — they’re part of the Big Banker Promotion Team.
BlackRock turns up the heat on AGL’s coal exit plans
Nick Toscano, Sydney Morning Herald
AGL faced an investor revolt on Wednesday, as more than 20 per cent of the company’s shareholders backed a resolution for the board to align the retirement of the Loy Yang A power plant in Victoria and its Bayswater station in New South Wales with a strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
This would mean shutting Loy Yang A, the largest brown coal fired power plant in Victoria, […]
Is that the dark smell of desperation?
Green energy is so essential and profitable that when the chips are down, investors ran a mile.
IEA: COVID-19 crisis causing the biggest fall in global energy investment in history 31 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion the largest drop in global energy investment in history, with spending expected to plunge in every major sector this year—from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency—the International Energy Agency said in a new report.
The unparalleled decline is staggering in both its scale and swiftness, with serious potential implications for energy security and clean energy transitions.
global investment is now expected to plummet by 20%, or almost $400 billion, compared with last year, according to the IEA’s World Energy Investment 2020 report.
Not only has the money gone, but renewables have been out-competed at the thing they are supposed to do best.
The Global Pandemic is the world’s greatest carbon reduction program since the Black Plague:
Those short-term benefits [of the Coronavirus] have been substantial. Consumption for jet fuel and gasoline, for example, declined by 50 and 30 percent, respectively, from early March to June […]
Just when you think banks are only in it for the money, along comes Goldman Sachs to advise us on the planetary atmosphere:
“Goldman Sachs released a 34-page analysis of the impact of climate change. And the results are terrifying.”
All these nice banks want to save Earth too.
Yusef Kahn, Business Insider, Sept 2019
For some reason (what could it be?) a few months ago the Goldman Sachs investment bank was gripped with a sudden urge to repackage the IPCC report. Perhaps they were afraid their clients didn’t watch CNN, the BBC, or, pick-any-channel, maybe they couldn’t afford a television?
A Goldman Sachs report on the impact of climate change on cities across the world makes for grim reading. The bank warned that “consequences of a warming world may well play out over several decades to come, even if efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions are successful today.” Rising temperatures would lead to changing disease patterns, more intense and longer-lasting heatwaves, more destructive weather events, and pressure on the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.
“Despite the uncertainty around the timing and scale of the impact, it may be prudent […]
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