Bank of America CEO says new ESG rules are needed to reboot capitalism at WEF | Hacker News Reader

Bank of America CEO says new ESG rules are needed to reboot capitalism at WEF

cnbc.com

26 pointsIronWolve13 comments

Nothing nefarious there. Just good old top-down controls by the richest humans in the world. Nothing wrong with that. Surely these changes will be good for the hard working folks who put in their hours.

And if the BoA top salary folks make big mistakes, taxpayers will backstop their salaries.

$20 billion in 2009 for failing. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks/bank-of-america-get...

I wonder the carbon footprint to get the BoA jets over to Switzerland.

Instead of ESG, countries should enact laws that steer companies in the direction that those societies want to steer them in.

ESG is this weird layer on top, where companies are "forced" to adhere to principles somewhat weirdly drawn up, by e.g. fund managers, and then enforced by PWC, Deloitte and friends.

As an example, the office we rent, they have some type of ESG bonds to fund them, so that real estate company asks us to sign a contract about office recycling and using wind for electricity. These are tickbox items that their ESG-auditor require. But there is no enforcement.

Also, I cannot argue with them (for example that nuclear is a better option for electricity generation). At least with laws, I can vote for another government. With ESG, as an individual I have no influence whatsoever.

> At least with laws, I can vote for another government. With ESG, as an individual I have no influence whatsoever.

Now you see the purpose of ESG being controlled by the finance industry. They want to control the rules.

ESG is a "good in theory, horrible in practice" sort of thing.

In theory, we want to make it easier to invest in businesses that are sustainably aligned. This is great! We all like our planet, we want our planet to be good and to aide those people who align with that goal while also building good products.

In practice, ESG is a bunch of removed bureaucrats casting laws that result in prohibiting the free movement of people (https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/roads-and-transport...) or removing the farms (and income) of farmers (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62335287).

It’s an unreasonable stretch—to the extent of dishonesty—to describe the implementation of “streets where private cars are not allowed” as “prohibiting the free movement of people”. It also has exactly nothing to do with corporate ESG, the subject of this article.

The filter gates are part of an environmental effort tied into the WEF's ESG concept, the same ESG concept BoA is responding to.

These are not trivial little sidestreets that are being closed to cars. These are major routes and thoroughfares. Nor is this a tax or fine (encouraging the use of buses), this is a hard limit with license plate scanning as enforcement.

People use their cars to be able to go places and do things. Restricting, meaningfully, the movement of cars is a restriction on freedom of movement. Trains and buses are great and we should encourage people to use them but we don't do that by locking people in with gates.

They should get right on that, right after they solve the mystery of how they lost millions of Zelle transactions.

ESG isn't capitalism.

Reboot. I don't think he knows what it means. Is the problem with Capitalism an Instance issue, or is it baked into the Class (heehee) ?

The same as was true 40 years ago. Now we just need some action.

A lot of the problems Davos wants to solve could have been already saved if those CEOs made their companies pay their taxes.

WEF is a forum where bankers are cos-playing governors. They want to run the country to their liking, but pesky american laws (constitution, election, freedoms and all that) stand in their way.

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