And the existing rule didn’t even REQUIRE that investment managers take ESG concerns into account. It just PERMITTED them to do so.
I would think investors should take into account whatever they feel is appropriate in evaluating a company. Prohibiting taking ESG items into account is just dumb. Sadly this has all become politicized.
Ok . . . I’m missing something here. Isn’t the Senate still a Democrat majority? I know that it’s not huge, but doesn’t this vote mean that there are some Democrats voting with the Republicans to make this happen? Why did they “break ranks”?
Two Democrats supported the Republicans: not surprisingly, given their conservative states, they were Manchin and Tester.
IFTFY
This bill proves that the current set of conservatives in office believe you, your father, and anyone else with money to invest cannot make the best choices regarding investing and choices need to be controlled by them. How else do you explain the banning of a set of factors used to measure the worth of an asset?
The choices obviously should not be controlled by the government.
I think there should be a duty to clearly state (not buried on page 37 of a prospectus that precisely zero people will read) that a goal is to avoid investing in companies that engage in the following X, Y or Z behaviors.
It’s sort of implicit that if a lot of investors don’t want to invest in Playboy because of the nature of the company… that will drive down the price of Playboy shares which would make their P/E ratio more attractive to… less prudish investors. So you are presumably giving up some return potential by avoiding them… at least if there’s a non-trivial share of like-minded investors.
That’s a fine decision to make… so long as everyone understands that’s the decision that was made.
Any requirements above and beyond disclosure are absurd.
Republicans are getting awfully paternalistic these days.
Yes, it is ironic that the party that trumpets freedom from government intervention is putting restrictions on investment decisions. They would prefer to engage in the culture war space than do what is best for folks.
There have been several threads discussing socialism but I haven’t seen this quotation from Harry Truman in any of the threads.
It is a good point about using socialism as a scare word. However, times have changed a little bit since 1952, with at least 1 of those items. Farm price supports can arguably be called crony capitalism as there are quite a bit fewer family farms and more corporate farms today. You’d have to show the benefit to consumers in having a better food supply outweighs the cost (not impossible, but something where a balance is needed).
And independent is not spelled correctly. 
Is all insurance socialism or only bank deposit insurance?
I’m not sure I agree regardless of the answer.
If it’s mandated by the government, I’d say yeah.
Maybe not as much if you get to choose the provider.
I would totally agree since we are comparing the 20 years before 1952 to the last 20 years. Times were certainly much harder for farmers during the 1930’s and 1940’s and small farmers then had little clout with big agricultural companies.
In the 1940’s, my American father-in-law helped small farmers in the Southern USA organize cooperatives to bargain better with large agribusinesses on prices. His activities were viewed as communistic by some and as a result he was interrogated by Joe McCarthy’s gang in the early 1950’s. The experience soured him so much on the US that he eventually moved to Toronto and renounced his US citizenship. Worked out fine for me as otherwise I would have never met and married his lovely daughter.
Was his wife Mrs. Brown?
RN
Give 'em hell, SG!
And thanks SG for showing me the right spelling.
The buck stops here!
I think that pretty well exhausts the main Truman aphorisms? Would have tried to work in “not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers” except Trump destroyed that maxim.
