You might know George Soros by his career as a global financial manipulator, or by his "retirement" job as a global political manipulator. During both parts of his life, he spent a lot of time in China, and Soros is no fan of Xi Jinping. He writes in The Wall Street Journal: Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, suffers from several internal inconsistencies which greatly reduce the cohesion and effectiveness of his leadership. There is a conflict between his beliefs and his actions and between his public declarations of wanting to make China a superpower and his behavior as a domestic ruler. These … [Read more...]
You Invest, They Win
The founder of the largest hedge fund in the universe, Ray Dalio, tweeted this from Burning Man:
Just back from Burning Man. Reminds me of Woodstock with better art (installations) and less good music. What a great vibe and what amazing creativity!
Photo is with my pal and coworker Jeff Taylor at his great music camp Root Society. If you go next year, 1-5am is best.
Are these the guys you want running your money? You invest, they win. But hey, it’s not about the money. It’s about saving the planet man.
Because if it’s about the money (Dalio has a personal net worth of $19 billion) then this hedge fund lost to a boring Vanguard fund that uses a conventional mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.
The article doesn’t come out and name the fund, but perhaps you, as a long-time reader of our websites, know the name: Vanguard Wellington.
You might also know what Vanguard founder, the late, great, Jack Bogle, meant when he said: “The grim irony of investing is that we investors as a group not only don’t get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don’t pay for.”
The captains of the investing universe are living their “best life” at whose expense?
Yours, of course. You invest, they win. Read more below.
Index Funds Put Politics Ahead of Shareholders in the Boardroom
When most shareholders invest in funds, they assume the decisions made by fund managers will be fiduciary in nature. That means the decisions should benefit the investors, not the fund managers, or their CEOs' EGOs. But as fund managers like BlackRock gather more power in ESG funds, they're becoming more active in boardrooms, pushing political agendas, not those of the shareholders. Dawn Lim and Justin Baer report in The Wall Street Journal: Investors have flooded into index-tracking funds in the past decade in hopes of getting broader access to the market at a lower cost. One unintended … [Read more...]
ESG Ratings Are a Subjective Mirage
Big fund companies like BlackRock, led by their EGO-focused CEOs like Larry Fink, have created an entirely new industry for themselves out of pushing ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds onto unsuspecting investors who want to make the world better with their money. While investor intentions are good, funds companies are more interested in the higher fees they can charge for saving the world than in actually driving change. The way you know that's true is the complete mish-mash of what these fund companies consider acceptable in their ESG products. The ratings they use for … [Read more...]
Democrats Trying to Cut Taxes for the Wealthy?
Democrats are working hard to cut taxes for the wealthy. Yes, you read that correctly. While Democrats are normally found calling for raising taxes on the wealthy, that isn't the case for many when the wealthy taxpayers affected are also major campaign donors. The cap on the State and Local Taxes paid (the SALT cap) set in place by the 2017 Tax Reform hit wealthy people in high tax states the hardest. Wealthy residents from places like California, New York, and New Jersey saw significant tax increases. Those high tax states happen to be home to many of the Democratic Party's biggest … [Read more...]
A WIN FOR BLACKROCK: Biden Throws Small Landlords Under the Bus
In 2018, the IRS recorded over ten million returns that included income from rental properties. That's more than just the "top 1%." There are millions of middle-class Americans who have invested in rental properties to achieve goals like putting their kids through college or saving for retirement. The moratorium on evictions created to help families through COVID-19 has put a lot of pressure on these landlords who must maintain properties, even if their tenants aren't paying rent. Here's the story of one landlord, Buddy Shoup from Spectrum News 1: When Buddy Shoup was 6 years old, he … [Read more...]
THE GREAT RESET: You Could Be Forced to Rent a House from BlackRock
If Klaus Schwab, John Kerry, and Bill Gates get their way, you won't own a home, in fact, you'll own very little at all. Private ownership creates inefficiencies, and inefficiencies generate more greenhouse gases, so if the Great Reset is going to work (for them), you need to give up what you own, starting with your home. Don't worry though, BlackRock's Larry Fink, another global climate change warrior for hire, is more than happy to buy your home and rent you another. Kit Knightly explains at Off Guardian [my emphasis added in bold]: The incipient “Great Reset” is a multi-faceted beast. We … [Read more...]
The Real Winners of the Infrastructure Bill: It’s Not You
You know when something receives "bipartisan" support in Washington, it's going to cost taxpayers a lot of money. The only time both parties seem to agree on anything is when both their sets of donors are getting paid enough of your money. The next bipartisan spending spree appears to be the infrastructure bill that Senators have been working on. At the Cato Institute, Randal O'Toole explains that the only people likely to see the benefits of this bonanza spending are the contractors asked to perform the unnecessary work. He writes: The Senate reportedly passed an infrastructure bill last … [Read more...]
BlackRock Wants Investors with a “Shared Vision”
Do you share BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's "vision?" BlackRock wants investors committed to a "shared vision to transfer to a low-carbon economy." The company's ESG guru for its iShares subsidiary, Sarah Kjellberg explained how she's implementing this vision to ETF Trends. They reported on the interview: Looking at how investors have integrated climate awareness into their portfolios, Kjellberg explains how BlackRock has integrated climate risks into their capital market assumptions. Kjellberg adds, “while we’re seeing institutions in the world take pretty significant action to address … [Read more...]
We Three Kingmakers: These Firms Control Almost Everything
Three firms are gathering enough control over the stock market that if they are aligned on a corporate board decision, there's almost no way to stop them. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street now control such a large part of the U.S. stock market, that when voting together they can control nearly any issue. John Rekenthaler explains at Morningstar: In aggregate, the Big Three of Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street now hold 43% of the fund industry's U.S. equity assets. In addition, each of those companies serves institutional clients through separate accounts and collective investment … [Read more...]
COAL STRIKES: BlackRock the New Kingmaker?
You know that BlackRock's Larry Fink has taken on the role of arbiter of corporate ethics. He's feeding his own EGO. His push to use investor money to sway board decisions on so-called environmental, social, and governance issues (ESG), has had major effects on how corporations are being run. Instead of focusing on returning value to shareholders, CEOs, whose pay is often tied to the company's short-term stock price (not long-term performance), are focused on making sure company stock ends up in BlackRock's latest ESG index fund offering. If it's included, the CEOs can expect a major bump in … [Read more...]
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