Free Republic

International Man: With nearly $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM), BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. The company exploded in size after the 2008 financial crisis, and that’s no coincidence. Central banks around the world have printed scores of trillions since then. A significant portion of that freshly created money eventually found its way into the stock market, specifically BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs). BlackRock was also responsible for helping the Federal Reserve manage its massive debt portfolio after 2008. It’s another indication of BlackRock’s cozy relationship with the government. BlackRock is a good illustration of the Cantillon Effect—those...

“For rogue platforms refusing to comply with important obligations and thereby endangering people’s life and safety, it will be possible as a last resort to ask a court for a temporary suspension of their service, after involving all relevant parties,” the EU states.Unbeknownst to most people of the world, the internet has officially changed forever and what people are allowed to say and publish is in great jeopardy. One month ago to this point the European Union’s invasive law called the Digital Services Act (DSA) took effect, that essentially allows bureaucrats in the EU to become the arbiters of speech...

The controversial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings system for businesses made popular by BlackRock, Inc. was put on indefinite hold last month, citing a concern that people now understand what it means and totally hate it. According to sources, the company plans to bring it back at a later date when they come up with another name for it that nobody knows about. "ESG has been a great money-making scheme, but it was destined for failure once people figured out it was nothing but a tool for pushing radical Communist ideology," said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. "But I'm confident...

Unilever is a £100 billion company, one of the biggest beasts on the London stock market ... But have its bosses gone off their trolley in their mania for 'woke' values? Terry Smith, a leading fund manager and long-term shareholder in Unilever, thinks so. He used his annual letter to his own investors as the forum for an extraordinary broadside at the company's top executives, accusing them of having 'lost the plot'. ... Critics have been uneasy for several years about Unilever's politically correct antics. At times, its posturing would have seemed more at home in an undergraduate common room...

Americans can’t afford food, but leftist and Chinese companies get bailed out. Silicon Valley Bank spent billions on green energy, millions on Black Lives Matter and other leftist causes, until it finally ran out of ‘other people’s money’. That’s when the Biden administration decided to bail out its depositors. At a dinner hosted by Peter Orszag, Obama’s former budget director, Wally Adeyemo, Obama’s Nigerian assistant treasury secretary and Biden’s deputy treasury secretary, chatted with Blair Effron, an influential Biden donor, serving on Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board, who had been hired as an advisor by SVB to deal with its financial...

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank may have appeared sudden and unexpected on the outside. But the company and its chief risk officer parted ways in April 2022, and its risk committee more than doubled its meetings to 18, suggesting growing concern with the bank’s position, according to the company’s 2023 proxy statement. Depositors, advised by venture capital firms to pull their money after the company sought a $2.25 billion capital raise to shore up its equity position, withdrew some $42 billion in cash over 44 hours, creating the liquidity crisis that led the FDIC to take over the bank...

PJM Interconnection sounds the latest alarm that fossil-fuel plants are shutting down without adequate replacement power. The political class yawns. ... The warnings keep coming that the force-fed energy transition to renewable fuels is destabilizing the U.S. electric grid, but is anyone in government paying attention? ... The PJM report forecasts power supply and demand through 2030 across the 13 eastern states in its territory covering 65 million people. ... Fossil-fuel power plants are retiring much faster than renewable sources are getting developed, which could lead to energy “imbalances.” That’s a delicate way of saying that you can expect shortages...

The Idaho Legislature’s House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday introduced three new Republican–sponsored bills designed to combat the use of environmental, social and corporate governance — or ESG — standards. ESG standards and ratings are used in business investments and credit ratings, and can indicate social consciousness, a commitment to environmental stewardship or a commitment to sustainability. In the past year since conservative pundit Glenn Beck discussed ESG during a February 2022 visit to the Idaho State Capitol, Republicans have seized on the standards as an example of a liberal, woke agenda run amok. But Idaho Association of Commerce and...

House Republicans will vote on legislation next week to kill the Biden administration’s controversial rule that allows private retirement plan fiduciaries to consider environment, social and governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions for their clients. The Department of Labor’s controversial rule, which took effect in February, has been derided by Republicans and dozens of trade associations as an effort to impose a social agenda on the more than 140 million Americans whose retirement plans are governed by standards set by the federal government. For decades, those standards have said investment decisions must be guided by the goal of maximizing...

The Florida House announced proposed legislation to protect Florida pensions and state investments from politically-driven ESG discrimination. TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) announced the filing of what he calls “landmark legislation” that would protect Florida retirement accounts and state investments from financial discrimination. Eliminating the consideration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment strategies have become a focus of the upcoming legislative session after both Governor DeSantis and Florida’s CFO Jimmy Patronis announced that the state would divest from BlackRock Investments after concerns over ESG. “DRIVE UP THE COST OF LIVING”.. House Bill 3,...

Twenty-five attorneys general and several other plaintiffs have sued the Biden administration asking the court to halt a federal ESG policy that could negatively impact the retirement savings of 152 million Americans. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Northern District Amarillo Division naming Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh and the U.S. Department of Labor as defendants. It alleges the U.S. Department of Labor created a rule prioritizing “woke” Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing that jeopardizes the retirement savings of 152 million workers, or two-thirds of the U.S. population. Last November, the Department of Labor finalized a rule...

As the new House Republican majority gets sworn in this week, they have no choice but to use the only mechanism at their disposal to highlight the emergency unfolding at the border: impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His acts of nonfeasance include acting on the president’s orders and presiding over a situation in which the border is, for all intents and purposes, being erased. GOP moderates — many of whom are members in good standing of the Washington uniparty — think they are obligated to pursue “governance.” This sets up a conflict in which anything the new...

Ever since Elon Musk announced his intentions to buy Twitter, the reaction from liberals has been nothing short of a meltdown. When Musk actually clinched a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, the meltdown morphed into a full-scale implosion. The primary cause of the outrage was Musk’s pledge to defend free speech as shown in his recent tweet: Most of the anger emanated from the Washington Democrat establishment and rapidly spread like wildfire elsewhere.Musk recently added a caveat to his assertion about free speech saying that it has to be within the realm of the law.Here is what Elon...

Leaders at one of the largest investment firms in the world, State Street Global Advisors, will need to ask permission to hire White men as it rolls out a diversity hiring initiative. "This is now front and central for State Street — it’s on every senior executive’s scorecard," said Jess McNicholas, the bank’s head of inclusion, diversity and corporate citizenship in London, according to the Sunday Times. "All of our leaders have to demonstrate at their annual appraisals what they have done to improve female representation and the number of colleagues from ethnic-minority backgrounds."

Many there are who have attained public office and sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Alas, as we are now learning, for many both the oath and the Constitution are little more than a means to obtain power and abuse the liberty of common citizens. As a way to curb these abuses of power, I am here soliciting input from fellow FReepers - especially those who are well-schooled in Constitutional governance as it ought to be - to posit questions for those who aspire to public office as a way better to weed...

VATICAN CITY, April 8, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has addressed the World Bank and International Monetary Fund at their spring meeting, calling for “global governance” in light of COVID-19, strongly advocating for universal vaccines, and bemoaning the “ecological debt” which is owed to “nature itself.”His letter is the latest in a series of recent acts in which Francis has aligned himself with global corporations committed to anti-Catholic agendas.The letter was delivered via Peter Cardinal Turkson, Prefect of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, to the spring 2021 meeting between the World Bank and the International Monetary...

Democrats, the crisis makers, may discover that they’re mired in a crisis of their own making. The Biden administration has enjoyed no honeymoon. The cabal that addled Joe Biden fronts really didn’t want one. Bridge-building, comity, and compromise are passé. What Ron Klain, Susan Rice, and a knot of plutocrats and “progressives” who pull Joe’s strings want are crises. Manufactured crises are just as good as the real deals. They’re opportunities not to be wasted. Not wasted for what, you may ask? Not wasted for power and money. Democrats’ reflexive appeals to compassion and kumbaya are shabby, if serviceable, ploys....

Sir Alexander Tytler was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer, and historian. Lord Tytler lived from 1747 until 1813; about the time of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson in America. Tytler was a professor at the University of Edinburgh. One of Tytler's most influential and proverbial historical writings was about the lifespan of countries operating under democratic republican governance. Tytler believed the life expectancy of a self-ruled nation was about 200 years. Tytler was very dismissive about who holds the real power in a democratic republic or even a pure democracy. He felt these types of government do not last, cannot sustain...

The West Virginia Republican Party will overtake the Democratic Party in registration within a matter of months. That will be a milestone in the dramatic shift in the state’s political makeup for nearly a century. Numbers from the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office at the end of December show the state has 467,438 Democrats and 461,485 Republicans—a difference of just 5,953 voters. Looked at another way, 36.82 percent of voters are Democrats while 36.35 percent are Republicans (22.77 percent are independents). The Democratic decline, and subsequent Republican gains, have been occurring over the last 20 years. As recently as...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared to conclude that President Trump and his allies “don’t believe in governance” — her explanation as to why they reject sweeping mask mandates — during a guest appearance on a bonus episode of Hillary Clinton’s podcast You and Me Both released Monday.