Business Pants – 2022-03-30

Live. From oh the United States Postal Service in Pueblo Colorado, it's exciting way blow. It's a it's a we have Smart listeners edition of business pants. Mail bags. Featuring. Emma lurking. Of course, this is my favorite. I mean I'm not happy when I was not here but I love when I'm a truly lurks and this fashion. Yeah, she's probably watching us on YouTube. That's how early today and meticulous matte. I'm the guy staring and smelling a cantaloupe for 20 minutes. Trying to say which one to buy the Piggly. Wiggly. I'm not that guy. I do the same thing I tap them. Like smell the top. Did you smell the top? Yep. It smells sweet and then you tap them to see if they like going see because there's a 800 you And today's mildew and crusted mailbag. Called March 30th 2022. We have viewer mail And March sadness. Come on, let's start off. Let's go, let's go to our games. Come on quickly, do it. Here we go. Actually, we don't even need Emma here because her bracket is busted. And so, is ours. And so is mine, here we go. Everybody's bracket is busted except for this guy through the elite, the results are in. Let me quickly go over the games. Apple beats Roblox 3, nothing Apple continuing to dominate. Including this great greenwash glow. Where they they put out a press release apples Coda wins historic Oscar, for best picture at the Academy Awards. I don't feel good about that. By the way, I don't feel good about. Yeah, making films and I don't I don't feel good about me. No, I just wanted to kill the music and the buzzer that I would like this, anybody remember, who won the Oscars anymore? The only topic of conversation Rockwell. I mean, well, I'm from the New England area and there's a, there's a story in the paper today about how he was cited in Boston, and he's a show tonight or tomorrow. And he's heads down outside the Ritz Carlton, and the whole thing is weird. Was this face black and blue? Where that looking for that. That's what they were going for. I'm supposed to feel sorry for a dude, checking into the Ritz Carlton. Know that's all I'm gonna say. All right. Ah, the second game. Zoom, zoom takes down. Nike two to one. Zoom stock is soaring actually, but it wins this on a closed sucks. Battle, 25 of 22 and this impressive greenwash. Called Introducing the newly redesigned. Zoom up, partner program, featuring the large photo of a very happy black woman like that happiest. Black woman. I've seen in a press release and a long time. Yeah. This is a big old smile. So good. Good one on using for, for that weird. I guess it's a black wash Zoom. I need to say this picture. Zoom taking down Nike two to one and a very close battle. This one actually went into overtime Salesforce East out of victory, over GM one, nothing. This is a bit of a lackluster, not a lot of offense, a one-to-one and green and wash zero to zero and sucks. Salesforce just squeaks by in the terrible on the tiebreaker because it's share price was slightly less. Then. GM's. I'm glad because I had sales force, right? The Apple Salesforce game and Apple's gonna trout Salesforce probably. Yeah, you're going to the final without no way. But my hat's off to Salesforce for this incredible. Incredible greenwash, maybe the best so far the tournament and again, there's still alive. So they're the underdog. This point listen to this green wash that they won this game on ready. It's called promoted on Parental leave. How Salesforce supports women at every stage of their lives. I just love that. Every stage of their lives. From embryo. From that first conversation where your parents were deciding. Should we keep it? Should we give it up for a doctor? I mean, we're pro-choice. So, you know, it's an option from the first time, you told them that you were running away because you hated them so much all the way to now, A Netflix or in our best game of the week by far in the elite. Eight Netflix and Amazon. This one again. Another one went to overtime, a double overtime. It was one one battle and it went to overtime, Amazon takes it. On its share price. Yeah, the greenwash was a tie for for Netflix took to suck category but Netflix unfortunately Netflix is share prices have been up 5% since the Oscars so they've been doing well there. So Amazon takes this and Amazon takes this for a complete amazing string of a green wash headline here they are. I mean, really Amazon flexing, its greenwashing, it's really masterful. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna remind our listening audience. That these are four green wash, press, releases over the past, like two or three days. Yeah, there we go. Starts off with the classic. Amazon's assistance and Ukraine. Okay. Yeah. Okay. AWS contributes. Technology resources to support humanitarian relief. Awesome humanitarian. Yeah. Amazon glow. Reinvent how kids connect with remote? Loved ones? Yeah. And kids. Because before Amazon glow. Was there a way to reach out to your relatives? You had no, yeah, no idea whether you had nothing. Exactly exactly. And finally, this great greenwash article called meet the employee behind Amazon's disaster. Relief efforts. Wow. So I was proud of Amazon that was a good week. That was a good game for them. So here your final form matchups Apple versus Salesforce. Man, I already alluded to that one. Zoom versus Amazon. I'm excited for the Zoom versus Amazon. Actually, it's, I mean, like, I think it's got to come down to Apple versus Amazon. I don't think I am on the green. The green washing out of Amazon. I don't think there's a way to stop it. Oh please, I hope, I don't think. As far as we're concerned, Matt is the only one still alive. He has the potential winner and apple and he And you actually have both ends of the Apple versus Salesforce game, so you're guaranteed to have. Well, I don't know what you're guaranteed to have. Are user are listener. Oh, she still has three out of four teams alive, but not the winner, she picked. Yeah, he picked Netflix or they picked, I don't know. And some dude named Kyle. Kyle. It still has Zoom alive as he is. Kyle picked Zoom to be the winner, still alive. Good. Yeah Kyle let's just Kyle did OG pre-covid picks like a pandemic was raging good on you Kyle. That's about it. But I love the matchup. Yeah, I don't know when we're really, yes, I think they're Friday. I think we announced as winners Friday, the sad part for our listeners who did participate. None of you are in line to win. Free float, swag anymore. Wait, it was talking about if you pick it correctly. We will make the swag for you, unfortunately, the only one who picked to correctly was me. So I'm in line to win our own swag. Wait, talk. What? Kyle no shed just told you that they Can't pick the champion would you? So we want to just give it to the person who comes closest. Well, we have a point system, we could do. But I'm telling you, Kyle is still alive was in though. No, he's telling, you know, I'm telling you, the Kyle is going to lose to Amazon here. Okay, I'm the only one actually alive. This is why we play the game. Here, we're out of our sadness. Let's do some other things. All right, if you or male Yeah. I like The View today shows dedicated solely to our listeners. These are actual actual listeners, actual questions. I'm gonna pretty much go out. These verbatim. I'm gonna kind of pick up the highlights. First one. Are we supposed to? What names do we want to name names? I don't say who the listener's are we just? We're just give a first name maybe, but no details. Like, I'm not like giving their social security number out on our show. I gotta tell you, this probably nothing more boring than these people's names anywhere. So let's skip over that Okay, well I like the subject of this question and this one was written to question that free float media.com. So I'm glad that exists. Here we go from our website. Yeah website. The subject is caffeine is a diuretic, so maybe Pepsi's plan is to dehydrate humans to replenish aquifers. I love it. So, we last week I think we talked about Dr. Pepper. I had a plan. To what was their plan to be? Their plan was to be net. Positive water. When I'm positive. Are so this that's right. This listener kind of clearly some more than us is suggesting that yeah, by giving people all this sugar water Maybe. Yeah, maybe we'll just piss. Well, piss the pot. We'll be piss positive. They'll be piss positively. No, I don't know. I just read it. And all I heard was this blah blah blah. Oh okay I don't like that. Okay, the question The Listener goes on to talk about regenerative agriculture, including the kind where ruminant sequester carbon and soil. They want to get our take on regenerative agriculture. They want to know. Are we vegan? Do we eat me? So, which one do you want to? Which you want to, which one you want to go? First, what do you want to do? I mean, you're like a vegan Right. Okay, I'm gonna say this. I don't even adjacent. Yeah, I don't meet you at home but I do. I do enjoy me at restaurants and we have a lot of lovely restaurant around here and I do enjoy cheese and meats at those restaurants. So I don't know, I, I don't really qualify for being cool. I guess I am never a vegan, you know, you're like complete meat. like actually, two I am. Well, I'm lactose intolerant, so a little bit. But um, but actually I I have adapted my diet over the last three, four months. To be like once a week meet kind of thing, more butter all the time. Butter, I'm really just ramping up to barbecue season, which is coming where it's meat, basically, every day. You're taking a break. So, you're on. Just, I'm on me. All right, I can attest to the fact that Ari and me, neither of them are vegan either. Or I don't even do they even watch? I mean, do we even care about their diet? Let's be honest, I have to remind already to eat once a day. Yeah, that's works. I find their their dietary existence is to be like, extremely boring. When I met Ari, she was actually 40% comprised of lentils. That's all they're never sharing recipes. They never tell me about their night out, their restaurants, the bars. Nothing. They just, I don't even think they just, I mean, you know, started this company in a pandemic right there, isn't that? I don't care about that. All right, all right, of Agriculture. Yes, let's do it. I actually pulled two headlines in the last week about regenerative agriculture including this one Applegate seeks to democratize regenerative agriculture with accessible. Do good, dog across the industry Partnerships. Wait, I like kidding, I eat. I eat Applegate. This is a real thing. So Applegate is using a hot dog as the Forefront of battling climate change. They partnered, they partnered with sunfed ranch which is certified regenerative by what sounds like the make-believe Savory Institute but apparently you started by a guy named Alan Savory, he's done like Ted Talks he's kind of famous for. Yeah it does it all sounds suspicious to me but this is a thing that bigger companies are starting to pay attention to. Here's another headline, these cattle ranchers, are raising be better, beef spending less and reducing carbon emissions, it's about how a few cattle ranchers, have figured out a lot of regenerative soil, you know, stuff to sequester, carbon in the soil, and rotate crop grazing and they're getting better lands and the beef taste better. but, I mean, I don't have a hot take on it, except to say, yeah, it's seems like a no-brainer like absolutely. I know, you know, you know, I'm big in on this. This is why I report to love the Deep fake meat. I mean 44% of us. Land is used for agriculture and just half of all of that land just under half is just for three crops wheat, corn and rice, there is so much fucking corn in this country Corn sons of certain. Yeah I and I and really, it's not corn, it's not like you eat the corn, its corn syrup, right? No. I know. So it's like, like I all the question of like, big food and regenerative, AG seems like a non-starter in some ways, because they're protected by their, basically, just leaning deep into subsidies. And they're selling corn syrup like Archer Midland, right? Like Archer Daniels Midland. The one of the biggest producers in the entire world is basically growing corn for corn syrup that gets used by Dr. Pepper and Pepsi. So I I don't and then they get like some credit from msci or ESG providers msci. Not so much, but sustainalytics for like providing nutrition or like solving an sdg. So like our ADM actually gets credit for biodiesel according to msci because they're using corn and biode and it's kind of like I don't know. Like the amount of carbon they sort of destroy in the soil to make corn so that we can get diabetes does not exactly seem like a trade-off. I'm willing to make for like six cents of biodiesel. I don't the only the only way out of this I see is like Some kind of a regulatory effect, like on the tobacco industry. I don't, I don't see any way out of this other than that, right? Like I have some pretty extreme regulations because because Consumers don't seem to care. I mean, we've been beating this drum now for decades. Does anybody care? I feel like everybody should be as like part of citizenship in the US should be forced to watch the Ken Burns Dust Bowl, documentary from PBS and then what the baseball I gotta Pop Quiz. They don't on this question for you. I gotta pop quiz for you. Okay. How about this, for a land? Use pop quiz? Yeah, you're not gonna get this kind of content anywhere else. So Ledges. Hold on. This actually requires Land, use pop quiz. If you could fill in the blank, I'll tell you the global land use for livestock is 27%. 19% of global land is barren. 26% or forests, 1% or cities and 1% is fresh water. Change those numbers. What do you think it should be? How much percentage of land use should be used for cities? Well cities, we've learned are sort of the, our great hope for climate change, right? The urban policies, the Terrible. Well, I thought it was the opposite. I said it's just so much, but I thought, but I thought that that there's a, there's an ability to control the population and control the, you know, through Know, I'm wrong. Every conservative just lost their minds, their population control, and I'm completely, I must be completely out of the game. I always thought that You know, public transportation, public transportation for vertical farming. I just thought that you could anywhere, you are using less land. Like, there's a think about the size of Manhattan versus the size of like Wyoming. If you could make a sustainable City, And then, leave no suburbs. Like everyone was in the city and it was like, yeah, I'm happy with that. Sure sure. All right, sure. So you're like 2% City guy, I don't even know how to answer this question, but I but I, but I will answer because I don't even remember the numbers you're talking about, but I will answer it this way before the show started. We were talking about how Carl Icahn Is putting two board members up at Kroger right? Because Carla comes new. His new pet peeve is Animal Welfare, right? Because his daughter doesn't like the way pigeon treated at McDonald's. and I said to you, that look This is probably not a popular opinion but I'd be willing to if we could reduce meat consumption by 90%. I would be okay with if those that was 10% of animals that we were then eating were, you know, like punched and harassed and bullied. I know, I know it doesn't sound right popular but I I'm a big proponent of the reducing. The consumption of me. I don't know where you're going with this question. 26% of land being used by livestocks on frightening to me. I really I'm over by that number. Yeah, that's it. Feels like a tremendous amount of land so that we can have steak. It just does not seem like a great idea. I'm okay with, but the amount of like crappy Burgers being sold across the world is depressing All right, I'm gonna just Mark you down as 0% livestock land and let's move on to our next question. Next this listener. There's a series of questions here. Oh, this person's really tuned in. Let's just say Really to us, or as in like finger on the pulse. Maybe everything first. The Listener talks about the international sustainability Standards Board, I SSB wants talking about global reporting framework. Once the once to know, if this will benefit the ESG ratings providers and specifically, will it help this? This listener seems concerned by the fact that like, say at msci will rate one company One Way Saints will write the other one. Another way, in terms of ESG risk. So they're wondering, could this help to alleviate the disparity there. By having these standards in place. Oh God, I hope I hope. Could you imagine being concerned with this? Like standards. Yeah. What do you want to lose this? I mean like this is my favorite thing though. I love that, I love this battle in the ESG research world. How like, the ratings battle I do. I love is ridiculous. It is I wish it was more like the the sharks in the Jets, I wish it was more like 50 than it was standards. I think the essence of the question here is Will standards benefit like will they create basically standard ratings? Well, having a global standard of reporting. Create a more global standard of rating, but it won't affect the methodology is used by the individual companies. And I well it's not even the companies. Oh. You mean like msci right? Yeah. But I think actually, it's They might. Like create more correlation because you'd have the same information to go off, but the answer is not really. Unless clients say to msci or sustainable Olympics, we want the rating to only reflect within the standard. then well, they it won't really Well there could be you know, there could be a version of that because I was thinking, why wouldn't the ISS be come up with a methodology of its own? Like a rating based on its standards. Right? I mean that was just go like yeah. The deep inside baseball is when Bloomberg, when Michael Bloomberg said up, sassy the sustainability Accounting, Standards Board. Yeah. Um, then at that point and then you there was a fear that they would set up a framework through sazby that Bloomberg would, the company would effectively Implement immediately. And like, so they get all this buy-in and they'd make it a foundation and a nonprofit whatever. And then somehow magically, all that data is already on Bloomberg and everyone just buys Bloomberg. Yes, she data. Didn't really happen that way. But there's always a thought that yes, if they just made their own rating is effectively look. The reality is that these rating on since they probably shouldn't exist in the first place, they're there for Marketing sales. I mean, think about it, like, think about say you're a basketball fan and you fall 30 teams right here in the United States. There's no There's no, we don't rate the teams. It's, you know, there are, there are stats. We look at to fall wins and losses Point differential, whatever we don't like, we don't give the Lakers a B+ and walk away, feeling good, or Triple B or whatever like, that's ridiculous. It's so it's so ridiculously subjective. I get, I kind of get why they're doing. I don't really get it. I think it honestly, I think it's intellectually dishonest, but, but I but, you know, you need to sell something, but that's the problem. That's really the problem to me is this the dishonesty of this like subjectivity. It's ridiculous. I mean, we're already designed us because we are saying and ESG rating and pretending ESG is a thing, right? Well, no, I'm okay with that. I'm not. It's not a thing. I'm okay with that. It's three random letters like I could love so someone could have called it like the the I mean we could have called it the outer space, you know. Copper Mining and cuddly animal. Like, stats, it's just well, it's random. It's fucking random it. Yeah, I mean, no offense to the ens the G's. I kind of understand because the G has kind of like set in stone data points and maybe the E will now that the US is pushing for more disclosure, but this is kind of a nightmare. I mean, I, you know, it's like I I look at the different methodologies of these providers. I look at the data points. It, unfortunately, you know, it's it's very social science and I'm not against the social sciences, but you shouldn't be quantifying that, you know, in a way where you're rating it, it's as, it's as ridiculous as the Oscars and it leads to things like people standing up and smacking other people, and that's not a good thing. It's all I'm saying. Yeah, I tied that in there. Actually, I use you brought all the knots together. All right, let's move on. Let's talk about anymore. Yeah. You have anything else about the question? There was a sub question here. Okay, that was how did the companies know what to believe if the rating stay different, right? Like if they get ready to really well in one place and badly in another, and I will tell you this, I'll just say this shortly, I have worked with the companies directly on their ratings and they all uniformly. Every company I've ever worked with think that they're rated wrong. It doesn't matter for Microsoft. Yeah, I honestly once upon a time, I was in a meeting with a company that was rated top rated by msci and they spent two hours. Braiding me about the things that I missed and they were the top rated company. And I kept saying like, I don't know what you want me to do. You are the top rated company. Would you want, do you want to be topping? You want to get rid of the rating, I suppose. Basically, they think everything is bullshit and less. It's their number one. So the real question is really not. It isn't like, what the companies are going to think, like, are they going to be confused? It's what are their investors believe? Because the companies always believed their number one. And they investors are the ones who come at them with your rated. Like, Bottom by sustainalytics, do something about it. You're rated, they never. I've never heard investor go like good job on your msci rating but now they don't do that. They just come in when you suck at something and that's what you need to focus on. That's a human nature. Yeah, I'm sorry company nature. Yeah. Moving on. Come on. Can we move on? I just today. Now we get a little loopy, a little crazy here. Here's the question, should listed companies with crypto on their balance? Sheets be offsetting their emissions. Yeah, there was a yeah. Yeah go ahead. You can round it out around me. I was going to say there's also a question. Do you think with regulation finally coming in and climbing accounting, becoming a disclosure? Will these companies have to offset their emissions for holding crypto assets if they have made Net Zero pledges so that yeah that last bit is the only bit that matters so they shouldn't I mean should the listed companies with crypto? Be offsetting their emissions? I don't know. Um I like they can't they want mostly they should have a business. My advice would be My advice. Would you believe? That's maybe he's maybe pick, maybe pick an opera a business operation that actually contributes to the world. I mean. Yeah, that's right. That's my hot take ready. Is anybody want to cheer for my hot? Take does anyone? Oh, Okay, so outside of that, I did disclosure does not mandate necessarily that they offset anything, it just mandates that you say what you're doing. So you know it makes you a little more naked. If you say you're doing that 0 says, Tell us what you're doing about Net Zero, so it's not so much that they should but they're going to be in a position where if they said they're Net Zero, they're gonna kind of have to say some stuff because they'll look stupid. Otherwise it goes all the way back to the judge Louis Brandeis thing, he said like the 20s Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said, sunlight is often the best disinfectant. It just means it's just whole part of the whole name and shame game. It's just like, if you, if you have to expose that you're sucking, maybe you'll want to suck less. I will say the science behind that that phrase is dubious. I'm not sure that that's scientifically. Don't But don't ruin my parade. I think the second question that. So, Net Zero is really the key part there and disclosure is just like disclosure, like, you just gonna have to say, stuff about to prove what you said is a real thing or not, it doesn't mean you have to do something, but if you do decide to do something, Then really, this is a part here. That's like, what our carbon offsets anyway, and I know that like, so listeners sent us like, you know, a link to a blockchain based carbon offset company. Yes, beautiful, I got I got, I was in trance, I put on a little trip. Hop smoked. A doobie was a great website. I love it. Damien could not get over the website. Only the thing about all of those things are, like, look, verifying that you've removed carbon from the air, is not an easy thing to do and verifying that the company who said that they did. It actually did it and didn't sell it twice. Blockchain doesn't solve that. Like some of it is like a soul dish but really like what you're selling is carbon removal nfts and that isn't still didn't what I mean, you're on the blockchain by a bunch of computers that took extra carbon to prove that you removed carbon the whole Thing is a little yeah I don't what's solves. It is reducing your emissions. That's what solves it. That does that well to solve it better. Yeah. Look, the only thing, the only pushback here. Has to come from? Stakeholders, I guess shareholders like they have to either push for it and alternative democracy or they also have to push. For I guess tying pay to these issues to pledges I suppose but unfortunately companies when they do tie ESG issues to pay. If you're really look closely they're tying like 0.5% of their pay to ESG issues so then I don't give a shit. I mean, you know, I don't know. I am really excited though for the first round of like, climate disclosures like it. I love school closure in general. Yeah, because I mean, look, how much excite me. How exciting was it just to see what the Starbucks directors were drinking? Like the kind of coffee. They like that was the best. Yeah, so I think this is all right. Love. Just anything you don't. All right, moving on, these are all great questions. On this riveting topic. Actually I'm curious about what you gonna say about this. Is it possible for investors in passive strategies to have a say on proxy voting? Ah, this one's easy. If you are an Institutional Investor with a certain amount of money. Then, yes, if you are with BlackRock you now, have the ability to vote your shares and pass. Not all not all black rock funds though, right. I think it's only not all Black Friday funds are well, it's the they're passive funds that are ETFs. There's some specifics. But in a lot of cases, yes, you can. Now if you tell investors sounds like, if you're black rock client, and you call to try to vote your shares, they're probably like, Oh no, you're not. Not your, not your fun. You can't. Oh, I think it's the opposite, I think if you please. Yes, oh my God vote. Because you do now. It's your fault. You're the, you get this wrong. But, yeah. You say gay. We're not gonna say gay. Yeah, we don't say that here, but if you are retail, if you're just like investing on, like, Robin Hood on your own or you're like just a normal idiot. Like we are. The answer is no. ETFs are Actually structured as borrowed baskets and the owner of the basket retains, the Voting Rights. So BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street own on average, 22% of every S&P, 500 company geese, mostly through ETFs and a retail ETF and vote, investor. Basically the trade-off is you get to own a whole basket of stocks for a very low cost and you give all of your rights to the voting and your shareholder rights to Blackrock, or, you know what? Vanguard that's it. You just somehow amazingly answered the final question, which is a Wandering about how index tracker ETFs are structured. So maybe we can end the show on that. Okay, yeah, I mean, like the structures are like the, yeah, I'm not, I won't do that. That's a nice question. I'm not gonna answer. All right. Oh, your buzzing who I'm buzzing myself for not answering the our own listener mailbox. I want to thank. I want to thank our listeners for all those great questions. Actually, I enjoy doing these shows, even if your questions are really stupid, and I'm not really smarter than ours. So please we'll do this more if we get more questions. So yeah. So thanks I don't want to go. We're already four hours long and we can't we can't do a show to get out of here anymore. Yeah that's Damien. Raul is Emma. Lurked somewhere and I am at Miss, cardi will be back tomorrow with more. Thank you, business nuggets, good.