In 2022, eight of the top ten actively managed ESG funds in the United States fared worse than the S&P 500’s 14.8% decline—compounding long-percolating fears that ESG is a ruse.
When those fears first emerged, there were just a few voices willing to stick their necks out: Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent venture capitalist, took to CNBC in February 2020 to call it a “complete fraud”; Tariq Fancy, who used to oversee ESG investing at BlackRock, the powerful asset management firm, published a blog post in August 2021 arguing ESG was just a label the firm slapped on funds to charge higher fees. But they were outliers.
Over the past several months, however, the momentum has picked up. Now a growing cadre of executives, lawyers, and Republican officials has taken to lashing out against what it views as social justice parading as a serious investment strategy. The backlash reflects a growing sense that millions of Americans—those who do not subscribe to the new orthodoxy around DEI, the climate, and “stakeholder capitalism”—feel ignored by, and even at war with, the institutions charged with protecting their interests.
[If people decided to follow an ESG strategy for their own money, well, that’s their business. The problem is that retirement and investment accounts are largely managed by experts, and those experts are supposed to have the investors’ interests above their own personal predilections. That’s the issue at hand here. — Ed]
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