The nations biggest money managers are playing politics with Americans’ pensions and life savings

Are you paying attention to what the money managers you’ve trusted with your life savings are actually doing with your money?

Are they investing to get the best possible return so you can retire comfortably and perhaps buy a vacation home or leave a property to your children and grandchildren? Or are they injecting their own political bias into the way your money is invested?

Too often of late, they are doing the latter. They are playing politics with your pension. And that is a breach of their fiduciary duty to you as a customer. This scam could cost you tens of thousands of dollars in retirement income. Or more.

I’m referring to the latest fad on Wall Street called ESG investing, short for environmental, social and governance.

ESG investing secretly directs Americans’ personal savings (without our knowledge or explicit approval) into investments that are green, or otherwise socially conscious.

The scheme works like this: left-wing activists invade corporate shareholder meetings at companies like Walmart or Exxon and demand votes for hostile shareholder resolutions like demands for racial quotas in employment or advancing radical climate change priorities such as divestment in oil and gas companies (even though these have been some of the best performing Fortune 100 companies).

Many studies have shown that adopting these tough ESG mandates REDUCE a company’s returns to shareholders, ie, you and me and the 125 million other Americans who have their pension money invested in the stock market.

Our new study at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity has evaluated more than 100 of the largest money management funds from Fidelity to Blackrock to Morgan Stanley. In some ways, these money managers run Wall Street and the world economy. They have tens of trillions of dollars under management.

Here are the worst ranked firms that received an F grade:

Guggenheim Funds: F

Mutual Funds of America: F

Morgan Stanley Funds: F

BNP Paribas Asset: F

Our report found that these firms and many others may be breaching their fiduciary duty to obtain the best benefit for their clients by voting on radical leftist resolutions often without their consent. One way to protect yourself from this evil corporate malpractice is to move your money elsewhere.

I’m happy to report that there are three big money management firms that don’t play the ESG game at all and have received A grades on our Dimensional Investment Funds report card, Vanguard (Vanguard was a big proponent of ESG and has now withdrawn) . and T. Rowe Price.

There is some good news on the ESG front: The CTUP study finds that in the last year or so, ESG investing has been on the decline.

That’s because conservatives are beginning to pull their money from firms that are secretly harvesting their votes in favor of policies that don’t align with their values ​​or underperform the funds that hold their savings.

If investors WANT to invest in advertised ESG funds, they have every right to do so. It’s their money after all. But imposing costly ESG policies on investors without their express consent cannot be tolerated.

If enough Americans vote with their dollars and tell their brokers to cease and desist, this shareholder revolt could end the scourge of ESG once and for all.

Creators.com