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Myth-busting will help accelerate ESG retreat

Published

3 months ago

4 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In recent years the ESG movement, which holds that corporate managers and investors should consider environmental, social and governance issues to benefit various “stakeholders”—in contrast to the more conventional view that the responsibility of business is to increase its profits for the benefit of its shareholders—has gathered force. Despite considerable evidence of ESG retrenching, it remains in wide currency. However, many points made in its favour are not supported by evidence. It’s important to separate myths from reality.

The Fraser Institute’s ESG essay series is a good resource. In one essay, Steven Globerman reviews the research on ESG scores and investor returns and finds that the claim made by many ESG promoters—that companies with higher ESG scores produce higher investor returns—lacks supporting evidence.

In another essay, 2013 Economics Nobelist Eugene F. Fama notes that competitive market forces better address corporate governance issues than externally imposed top-down structures. Many environmental and social problems too are better handled by bottom-up market forces than top-down initiatives, particularly from government.

Additional essays refute other ESG fallacies including that the ESG movement is the result of widespread demand from individual investors, consumers and workers (in fact, it’s primarily a top-down initiative of elites including government); that regulation-imposed ESG mandates improve corporate governance (they actually make it worse); and that business profit-maximization is harmful to stakeholders other than shareholders (in reality, businesses focusing on profits is generally good for their consumers, employees and suppliers). The entire series is worth reading.

Also worth reading is an article in the Financial Analysts Journal by Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, which identifies and refutes 10 common ESG myths including the myth that a focus on shareholder value is harmful because maximizing shareholder value promotes an inefficient focus by management on short-term profit maximization. As Edmans explains, “Finance 101 teaches us that shareholder value is an inherently long-term concept. It is the present value of all future cash flows, from now until the end of time.”

To the extent that financial markets are efficient, expected future profits and losses are reflected in company share prices today, so even if corporate managers care only about today’s stock price, they will still try to maximize long-term value.

Edmans also takes aim at the claim that ESG stocks earn higher returns, again appealing to Finance 10. If ESG actually enhances a company’s shareholder value and this is known, it will be reflected in today’s stock price, so investors who buy the stock shouldn’t expect superior returns. “Feel-good” stocks should actually be expected to generate lower returns because if investors like holding certain stocks for non-financial reasons and dislike holding others, they’ll demand higher returns on the disfavoured stocks than the feel-good ones.

Various other myths include that “more ESG is always better” (in fact, ESG “exhibits diminishing returns and trade-offs exist,” Edmans writes) and that people improve ESG performance by paying for it (if people pay for improvements in some areas, it will cause companies to underweight other ESG dimensions). The final myth often promoted by ESG advocates and refuted in Edmans’s article is that regulation is justified because the market is imperfect. The blindingly obvious counterpoint—government is also imperfect.

ESG may be popular, but careful reading on the topic reveals that many points made in its favour are not supported by evidence. That may be one reason the ESG tide, at least in some places, is retreating.

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Matthew Lau
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WEF panelist suggests COVID response accustomed people to the idea of CBDCs

Published on May 1, 2024

By

Central Bank of Bahrain governor Khalid Humaidan

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

When asked how he would convince people that CBDCs would be a trusted medium of exchange, Bahrain’s central bank governor said that COVID made the digital transformation ‘something of a requirement’ that had ‘very little resistance.’

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will hopefully replace physical cash and become fully digital, a central banker tells the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Speaking at the WEF Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy Development on Sunday, Central Bank of Bahrain governor Khalid Humaidan told the panel “Open Forum: The Digital Currencies’ Opportunity in the Middle East” that one of the goals of CBDC was to replace cash, at least in Bahrain, and to go “one hundred percent digital.”

Humaidan likened physical cash to being an antiquated “analogue” technology and that CBDC was the digital solution that would hopefully replace cash:

“I thank this panel and this opportunity. It forced me to refine my thoughts and opinions where I’m at a place comfortably now that I’m ready to verbalize what I think about CBDC,” said Humaidan.

If we think cash is the analogue and digital currency is the form of digital – CBDC is the digital form of cash – today, clearly we’re in a hybrid situation; we’re using both.

We know in the past when it comes to cash, central bankers were very much in control with all aspects of cash, and now we’re comfortable to the point where the private sector plays a big role in the printing of the cash, in the distribution of the cash, and with the private sector we use interest rates to manage the supply of cash.

The same thing is likely to happen with CBDC. Yes, the central bank will have a role, but at some point in time – the same way we don’t call it ‘central bank cash’ – we’re probably going to stop calling it central bank digital currency.

“It’s going to be a digital form of the cash, and at some point in time hopefully we will be able to be one hundred percent digital,” he added.

When asked how he would convince people that CBDC would be a trusted medium of exchange, Bahrain’s central bank governor said that people were already used to it and that COVID made the digital transformation “necessary” and “something of a requirement” that had “very little resistance.”

“Right now, many of our payments are digital. The truth is, I said that we’re in a hybrid model; there’s less and less use of cash,” said Humaidan.

I think from predominantly digital with a little physical, I think the transition to fully digital is not going to be a stretch.

People are used to it, people have engaged in it and certain circumstances did help. Its adoption rates increased because of COVID.

“This is where contactless started to become something of a necessity, something of safety, something of a requirement, and because of that there is very little resistance; trust is already there,” he added.

Meanwhile, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has been going around the world telling people that the digital euro CBDC would not eliminate cash, and that cash would always be an option.

Speaking at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Summit in March 2023, Lagarde said that a digital currency will never be as anonymous as cash, and for that reason, cash will always be around.

“Is it [digital euro] going to be as private as cash? No,” she said.

A digital currency will never be as anonymous and as protecting of privacy in many respects as cash, which is why cash will always be around.

If people want to use cash in some countries or in some transactions, cash should be available.

“A digital currency is an alternative, is another means of payment and will not provide exactly the same level of privacy and anonymity as cash, but will be pretty close in terms of complete neutrality in relation to the data,” she added.

A WEF Agenda blog post from September, 2017, lists the “gradual obsolescence of paper currency” as being “characteristic of a well-designed CBDC.”

Last year at the WEF’s 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, aka “Summer Davos,” in Tianjing, China, Cornell University professor Eswar Prasad said that “we are at the cusp of physical currency essentially disappearing,” and that programmable CBDCs could take us to either a better or much darker place.

“If you think about the benefits of digital money, there are huge potential gains,” said Prasad, adding, “It’s not just about digital forms of digital currency; you can have programmability – units of central bank currency with expiry dates.

You could have […] a potentially better – or some people might say a darker world – where the government decides that units of central bank money can be used to purchase some things, but not other things that it deems less desirable like say ammunition, or drugs, or pornography, or something of the sort, and that is very powerful in terms of the use of a CBDC, and I think also extremely dangerous to central banks.

The WEF’s Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy Development took place from April 27-29 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties,” according to D.C.-based NGO Freedom House.

In the kingdom, “No officials at the national level are elected,” and “the regime relies on pervasive surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, appeals to sectarianism and ethnicity, and public spending supported by oil revenues to maintain power.”

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Parliamentary Budget Officer forecasts bigger deficits for years to come

Published on April 30, 2024

By

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Franco Terrazzano 

“Every penny collected from the GST will now go to cover interest charges on the Trudeau government’s credit card”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to cut spending and balance the budget following today’s Parliamentary Budget Officer report forecasting higher deficits.

“Budget 2024 was bad, but the PBO report forecasts the Trudeau government will be running even bigger deficits,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “This PBO report should be a wake-up call for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: get a hold of your spending or interest charges will keep ballooning.”

The PBO projects a $46-billion deficit this year. Budget 2024 projected a $40-billion deficit.

“PBO’s projected budgetary deficits are $5.3 billion higher annually, on average, over 2023-24 to 2028-29,” according to the report.

In Budget 2023, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government would find “savings of $15.4 billion over the next five years.”

However, “in Budget 2024, the government announced $61.2 billion in new spending,” according to the PBO. “Since Budget 2021, the government has announced a total of $251.6 billion in new spending measures.”

Interest charges on the debt are expected to cost taxpayers $54 billion this year, according to Budget 2024.

“Every penny collected from the GST will now go to cover interest charges on the Trudeau government’s credit card,” Terrazzano said. “Trudeau must balance the budget, cut spending and stop wasting more than $1 billion every week on interest charges.”

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