Business Pants – 2022-05-05

Hello alive. That's how we should start. Every show. Pour it from the bottom of Lake Superior. It's a hey Ma the ESG world has gone. Nutty edition of business pants. Joined as always, by Emma, is she allowed to tell people she had covid? I don't know. Lurking. I have good question. I don't know. What do you think about that? I'm gonna what I've been saying to people. What are the ethics there? And Matt? I've just been saying. Yes. Yeah yeah. I think I've just been saying yes. What's the question Ben who like are you alive? You have covid. Oh, okay. And that's Matt the prince of nothing mascardi. I heat up soup. That's what I do. Now in today's seagull scented bag of liquorice shaped nuggets called May 5th 2022. It woke data data. Wednesday on a Thursday. I, I love I like that. The bag is just a random, it is adjective. Now, adjectives. Now, like it's always the same. What are you getting? Random seagulls scented bag of licorice shaped nuggets. That's where just getting random. About getting random. Have you met me? The picture today is Matt long-winded piece. That is about the ESG world of investing. When you say, I would say, you say long winded. I say incredibly interesting. Okay, let me just I'm gonna just I'm gonna cover my story quickly, because Matt is threatening that he is way too much to say. So we dug in to Elon Musk has a filing with SEC. He's about 7.1 billion dollars so far and new finance. And you know for his purchase of Twitter highlighted by some mats. Favorites Larry Ellison. Yeah, a Saudi prints because Matt likes. Princes Sequoia Capital, but, but I got the full list and I'll put it in our newsletter. Not that anybody cares. Oh, binance is on there. The other ones who tweeted on Hitler's birthday. Is there anything here? Stand out to you? Matt, I'm not gonna go over. The only thing that struck me, was it. This is except for the Saudi Prince, of course, there's a hell of a lot of white dudes. They all have creepy Smiles. This is actual data, actually. I'm not this is not a factory, that is Damian Ross. This is what I found a lot of creepy, white smiling dudes who really haven't done much in their lives. Other than be they've been involved with money and investing in hedge funds but they haven't really accomplished much else in the world. Is that fair to say that just my perspective? They're just they're just money. Grubbers? That's all I. They there is very if you, if, if there was if you needed any evidence that they were sort of like two classes of humanity, one is mostly Rich Bros who follow each other around and do rich growth things. And the other one is everyone else. This is pretty good evidence of it. I mean, literally in no less than two of the Wikipedia pages of these investors, did they call them? The Warren Buffett of their country? Yeah. It's like it's like my education. I went to the the Harvard of the Midwest and I went to the Harvard of Canada. It's just saying. That's alright. It's alright, thank you. It's like, how can we make this all about an old white man? That's but all of these are basically like either Liberty and University grads interconnected through like you know, billions of dollars. Transacted amongst each other. And I think we actually my big takeaway was we don't give Larry Ellison enough credit for maybe being the pre Peter, teal Peter Thiel like he is OG. Teal And a lot of like a softer teal. I don't think he's just seem nearly as angry know, but he just spends the money and all the places that like does do the same. Here's my, here's my favorite and I'll pass it over to you mess with the show. Doesn't go too far too long, honeycomb Asset Management. They've already they're giving five million dollars to musk's terrible cause and that's led by someone named David faizel. Here's his quote. This is an actual quote and features, two of our least favorite people, or favorite depending on how you look at it. Here's the quote, I got my undergraduate degree in stock picking from Leon cooperman. Yes. Oh, he calls it. He calls him. Leaker permanent he's really on the inside. Yeah. And got my PhD in Risk manager from Steve Cohen so there you go. Good. Yeah, I think that guy didn't get sued for insider trading. You know, look this is a list full of, you know, either like almost arrests. It is a very big Rowdy list. This is very, its it right? Speaking of Friday, lists, Here's the story of the day. Sent from a listener. Part of this is sent from a listener. The rest of it is just me. Yeah, but I want to like I want to like shout out words interact with us Marcella. If you're listening, thank you for this. You turned me on to this story. It's the anti-woke dick war and it's on in full effect. I got three stories and it's anti woke Thursday. Not woke Thursday. Okay. Oh okay. I like this. This is anti. We've actually invent. We're Reinventing Wheels. We are we are hearing the binary, right? There's days. Whoa, and Wednesdays. Well, okay let's go. Come on. Oh Texas, makes an enemies of oil list. Florida, taxpayers are suing, he's of oils. Correct, you're here. Okay, good Florida. Taxpayers are suing. Ron DeSantis Marco Rubio wants a federal anti-woke tax Rule and a quick update on anti-woke proxies at the end. So, let's start in Texas where everything is bigger and stupider in Texas. Here's the background. They say one year ago. I don't know. Who says that one year ago, Texas passed an anti-fossil fuel investing law. That's right. There's two aunties there. I did not understand. I and okay got it, got it. Okay, the law states, the Comptroller needs to prepare. This is in the law. Now, The Comedy of the law is that literally, the entire law is underlined in like, yelling at you, it's really emphatic. No, The Comedy of the law is, how you pronounce con controller. It's not comptroller, its controller. Isn't it just pronounced controller. Welcome to the English language is comptroller. That's the comedy of the law. Um, thank you shall prepare Chuck. This is what the law says. They shall prepare an annual list of enemies of oil. Now, it doesn't say well, it says a list of companies who are boycotting fossil fuels. Okay, cool, very McCarthy, very McCarthy, it's a list. I love this. The sounds like ESG, this is ESG. Lists, is what Peter oil? That's not gonna say I'm a, you are so dead on like when I heard enemies of oil, I was like who what enemy of oil we have we have hugged it and made out with it. They can put a Thunderbird on the list and be done with it like that's the whole list. um, yeah and I don't know how Greta gets from place to place, but He's going this is what Peter tell was was railing against is that ESG just makes they just make they knit they call out their enemies or whatever. They just named they make lists and that they're horrible for it. Like, isn't this what they're doing here? This is different. Oh it's different. This is this is this is these are terrible people we're making a list of not. So basically the ESG industry has taught these people. Everything they know about everything and now they're copying it, exactly. It is literally a copy. Okay, so and here's the grand irony, all right. So they make a list of the enemies of oil, then they confirm the list. They actually write a letter to each of the financial companies ostensibly that are on this list that the letter sounds like this. Do you hate oil? If so we're enemies. I am paraphrasing. But that's pretty much what goes in the letter. And finally, Texas cannot do business with enemies and less. They become oil, loving Smoke Stack, embracing investors. That is what the law says. They actually have to divest from Financial companies. That has completely or like Harvard divest words, like, you still get to, they have like that involvement. Oh, there's carve outs in this, if you own an index fund like then that's okay. But anything that's active investment and he like whether you own a stock in that financial company or you do business with that financial company, they're managing your money. You got it, you got to take it out, you have one year. Can you on vacation with your family? Can you walk by one of these companies? Like can you like, how clear can you be with already come up? Well, we're gonna I'm sure they'll be a ruling on that soon but it's unclear right now whether it's not pretty big companies in this list, whether or not you can actually read a website that says, one of their names, the caveats, to this law, are this applies to contracts with enemies, only for 100,000 dollars or more. So okay. There's the small enemies were not cared about. We're just targeting the big enemies. And yeah the law can be ignored if it would be Be quote inconsistent with its fiduciary responsibility. Okay that. Yeah, they always say that. Now, listen before we get before we get to your list, Emma, I want you to really pay attention here because what what is most exciting about this list is that some of your enemies are also on this list. So everyone's I'm wondering if Emma is a sort of our new pro-life anti. Oh my God. You know don't say gay kind of queen right? Because I get to be there. That's exciting. You queen of something that I let me tell you something though. Making a list of enemies, he's actually really hard. so hard, in fact that Texas had to hire msci. One of the enemies to help. But where am I on the list? No. Embassy isn't on the list but I has a net zero reduction, Target and msci is the largest provider of woke data. In the world, arguably, right? But as we pointed out it's actually not walk data. It's just data but people get all correct. Yeah, but Texas thinks well. And the the problem here is if you want to find who's woke so that you can boycott them, you need to hire someone who gets all the woke data to figure it out. You're serious. I am serious enemy list. I'm dead. Serious is really created by msci. And here's the here's the reach out to us. Here's the amazing part of this. Yeah. Msci. Had to drop its fee from 100,000 dollars per year to 905,000 dollars per year in order to get under the enemy list threshold. So that Texas could hire them to make the enemy list for them. Oh my God. And msci. You are a true sucker because you could have you could have said 97,000 dollars. You just, you know, left, two grand on the table. What is wrong with you? You know, two grand, they left, 4,999 dollars on the table. That's terrible. That's nothing. That that is lessons that is like a new recycle bin and the Comptroller. Hegar had this to say about having a higher msci, in response. He said, quote the simple truth is that the creation of this list, would present no challenge whatsoever. If these companies were open transparent and honest about their position on the fossil fuel sector, that's right. The anti-woke dick war is all about disclosure. He basically just complained that they don't have enough data about the things that we've been asking where we want. Yeah. For 20 years so that right. But then I C C wants a truckload of more data and everyone's upset about the SEC. So I don't want gives what are we gonna do about? So I'm not going to give you the full enemy list of its 19 companies, you guys can see it in the production document immediately. Some of the ones that we know Emma doesn't. Yeah, there's there's Emma. If you have a, if you have one or two that stand out to you, feel free to bark. Oh BlackRock, my Ultimate Enemy BlackRock is on there. Well, don't forget Wells Fargo. That's new enemy right? Well, Fargo's, awesome. And I would also say that JP Morgan is an enemy. You know the largest provider of fossil fuel financing in the world. Yeah, yeah. Probably for the first time in many decades politically Texas in New York City are both agreeing. That Wells Fargo sucks to be a record of some. So one one from the left, the New York City from the left hates Wells. Fargo in Texas, from the right hate to Wells Fargo. It's nobody likes Wells Fargo. But here's might be actually before you go on, this might actually be the proof that ESG data is not woke at all. It's just simply data because they're using it for their prices and totally agree with other side of the aisle uses it for their purposes. You just blow up the entire art. That is the thank you point. That is you know and you know what? It said they bought, they bought ESG ratings. That's what they bought. I'm not joking, a soldier. Those like you a couple of days you can't make this stuff up. They literally are buying the thing that they say they hate in order to do the thing that they want to do. And that proves everyone's point that it's just data. Now two things two things here, okay, and we'll wrap up the story. Who's not on the enemies list is more interesting than who is on the endless. Here's who's not there. That stuck out to me. Citi, group Bank of America Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs. Yeah, all of them have Net Zero targets. They all offer the same funds but somehow are not enemies. Of Texas yet. Even though, JP Morgan. Is the largest financier of fossil fuels. In the entire world. They are an enemy. but somehow, Well I really am confused Texas and then with the with Goldman Sachs didn't they just didn't they just have a thing where there was an email that got leaked and someone was saying oh I'm glad that you're not as antifa. That was Black Rock was that was but they still made it still Black Rock. Actually, there's a quote that black rock is Enemy Number One. That's what they said, wow, of course, yeah, for the Fink effect. Well, I actually do ya think I actually do know why Goldman Sachs is not, is that that Texas Love's hard beats? They love DJ diesel. They love a good four four on the floor. Yeah, yeah, here's the thing. Number two. Texas actually wants those companies who aren't on the enemies list to become enemies. This is where my hat tip goes out to Marcella for pointing me to the story. The story is Texas's state. Pension fund voted for net. Zero financing prohibition proxies they voted for these proxies. Okay, so the state, the state pension fund in Texas is actually okay, voting. They favor of an improve environmental proxies removing fossil fuel financing proxies at Bank of America City group and Goldman, Sachs that is right. The of the four companies that stood out to me is not being on the enemies list, they voted for three of them to basically join the enemies list, Texas voted for its own enemies. Interesting, but we do know the Arthur State Pension Fund. Aren't they traditionally like the the Socialist arm of all New York? Just did something. I think their pension fund just sued someone, and they're with their very politically, New York State, Pension Fund. Yeah. Same with California. Yeah, except Texas. Evidently except the reason why they voted. Was number one. The, the law does does not talk about proxy voting and engagement at all, because as we point out all the time, no one understands, no one cares about it, and understands it. The alternative democracy is like, the hidden Democracy in America. And number two, they Outsource everything to ISS. So they literally got the information from ISS for proxy voting and just checked the box and sent it away to which The, when they found out they were quote, outraged. In Texas. They were outraged. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a lot, there's a lot for them to follow. This is a complicated. This is hard for them. It's very complicated. It's exhausting being so anti-woke, which Rings me to Story number two, in anti-wolf Thursday. Not to be outdone Marco Rubio. Yeah, yes, we did introduced a bill yesterday called the no tax breaks, for radical corporate activism Act. Who radical corporate activism? I like yeah, I think actually corporate activism Act was taken. So he went he added the he had to add the adjectives like that. Okay? Yeah, he's he's feeling all Juiced up because as he's trying to strike down Roe versus Wade, he's he's feeling the radical, he's getting, he's getting in, it gets, he's just feeling it, just feeling living in the cut. Yeah, he the, the, this act would eliminate tax deductions for travel if that travel was for an employee, getting a legal abortion in a neighboring state and wait, okay? That's what get rid of tax deductions. If there's a medical procedure done on for gender, affirming Care on kids, basically, and Petty hatred. This is just Petty hatred and I specifically targeting woke companies like Amazon Disney lift sales, force, and Uber, who made announcements about Uber, and which brings me to my two things. Number one, we have officially crossed into the metaverse when Amazon Disney and Uber are woke corporations that were yeah. What is happening like I'm I don't know it, literally my brain. I think, Matt what it means is that if you have one policy that sort of reaffirms, the human rights of anything, even a turtle, then the right will get angry, is that it? I, I guess if you say anything, kind look to anybody, here's what's happening. You even like if you, if you see, someone has a little bit of soup, dribbling down their chin and you like tell them and offer them your napkin, you're you're whoa, no, right. Like, that's a snowflake maneuver. Don't help anyone. All I know is that Texas, tired. Msci to get ESG ratings so it could boycott companies that were too highly rated. By msci, Rubio is targeting Amazon, Disney and Uber, who like I did anybody think of that like Disney is notoriously, one of the most conservative companies in the country. Not to mention that. I'm guessing that the population that visits Disney is probably pretty conservative, too. Totally was There. Yeah, I saw them. Yeah, they looked at me. Oh, that sounds wrong button. There's no buzzer for the sad. Yeah. Over under number two, over under how long until companies just decide is not worth being in Florida and Texas. This is C. This is the yeah this is where it gets interesting, man. I think it's not gonna happen. I think they're gonna stay because people are so obsessed with the weather like they. They're so afraid of like snow so that's why they stay in these horrible places, like Florida and Texas play. The long game here corporations. Yeah, you're smarter you're gonna last longer than DeSantis and Rubio and all these morons, right? The weather is moving further and further north. You've made sure of it. Just the weather, the weather is fine, but it's the tax breaks if you want to move north, that's it too. They literally are getting rid of them. Anyway, right. Like, so, if you're getting rid of all the tax breaks, your radical, what company, then just go north and play the long game. That's all I'm saying. Is right, though, that have to all go to New Hampshire because we like taxes up here. We actually like you, we do like that improving roads. And there's a terrible except, for literally, they went to like New Hampshire, even like, like They wouldn't go to Vermont Delaware. Delaware is the new Florida? Are you crazy? Yeah Delaware I suppose but I feel like Florida but that's where everyone does their taxes out of anyway, because I think Delaware is also a tax Haven know. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Plus associated with Biden. I don't they're not going to know. They should go to Delaware. Delaware, Delaware, if you're listening, Delaware, change your state name to Delaware is the Florida of 2040. Just Florida. Junior into it. All right, the next are my third anti-wolf story is Disney. In fact, because round Santa's freshly celebrating his Kabuki theater victory over Disney by revoking, its special tax status in retaliation for Disney being too woke but also not woken up on jokes. Don't say, I don't know what we're telling against that retaliation is apparently very expensive. The estimates were that Disney's going to have to pay one billion dollar In bond settlements. As a result of revoking, the tax status and now DeSantis is being yes. Sued by his own taxpayers for wasting their money for removing the tax status. Yeah. And I have two things to say about that. Number one. Correct. And number two. Yep, that's it. I don't want to get, I don't want to get dragged down into this because it seems like everyone is being sued for everything in this country. But do any of these lawsuits actually get anywhere. They shareholder lawsuits any, any idea man. I mean, these are taxpayer lawsuits and taxpayer loss. And no stakeholder, almost stakeholder. I don't think it's gonna happen. I don't know. I I want to know. Emma, where do these lawsuits go? The early report, so many lawsuits here. Where do they end up? Like, where do they vacation? What will what is likely to happen? Is the early estimates is that an order to pay? If it's true that they got to pay a billion for revoking, this tax status and DeSantis is on the record as why he did it as retaliation, right? Like that's clear. The estimates are that they have to raise taxes in Florida in order to pay for it and political nightmare. It's it's a it's a very it's a nightmarish situation and the taxpayer lawsuit is going to say, what analysis did you do before you were to text status that you're supposed to do. Because by law, you're supposed to do it, an analysis of this to pay for it. I did the same analysis that Elon Musk did when he brought Twitter, which is a nothing. Yeah, well I tweeted a bit, you can waste his 40 4 billion. Anyway, he wants, but DeSantis cannot all right. I don't want to talk about. Finally, a quick update on anti-woke, like I love when he says, finally, I really love. There are 32 anti-wolf proxies filed at 25 of the fortune 250 this year. How do you know they're anti-woke? How do you know? Because they're from one of two places, the national public policy research laboratory? I don't know, they have they have, there's two places that do anti-work, okay. Um, 28% of them, there's only two things I want to know, 28% of them have to do with charitable giving asking specifically, for disclosure about charitable giving because disclosure is the new anti-woke as planned, parenthood might be in that list, it's correct. And number two, 22% of them are asking for civil rights audits but Here's an example from the CVS proxy of what to expect. This is, this is, this is a file proxy. The CVS people voted on Cheryl holders, voted on Stockholder proposal and civil rights and non-discrimination audit focused on non-diverse employees. Non-diverse employees, yes. The audit of civil rights of white people. That's what they asked for. They that was the proxy. I imagine the audit will look a little bit like this. If CVS were to agree to it. Yes. White people have all the Civil Rights. That's it. That's my anti woke me. I have a question about the final thing so for the non-diverse employee non-discrimination audit is that are people going to vote for that? No right already voted no for anything, really? They don't vote. They didn't vote the highest votes for anti-woke. They got was at Disney for a similar like a charitable giving I think or love. Okay. Because we just we watch other like actual Proxy. Sorry. Shareholder proposals, not get passed about discrimination and disclosure of them, you know, they're They're racial statistics and pickups and whatever. And they all get knocked down and I was going to be really depressed. If you thought like these were looking, like they were going to pass. Yeah, these are just trolls, I think, I mean, which they're entitled to I suppose, but these are just trolls know, Matt. Do you think they actually think they're going to get somewhere with this know, so far of the ones that have come to vote? The average is about an eight percent four and don't forget. Yeah, the Disney one was 35%, okay? I mean, I, For my perspective, I think that whenever something is done from the right wing of American the American world its just for its theater. But that's the right thing. That's scary to me is I think it's not actually meant to do anything. I think that it starts out as theater but like think about yeah. It's like, you know, like the right and conservative people in the business world have been angling for this since the 70s and it started off as well. So deep theater that morphed into, oh, no, people believe this. Now, Yeah. Well you know what? That's probably the important point that we're forgetting. Is that theater all the Kabuki theater that match referring to. It does have a way of representing propaganda because you're right, because after a while, the message does sort of filter down into the the dummies, which and they start to believe it like to their credit, the conservative element and you in the US. Now understands that the liberal element in the US the rhetoric of Corporations around climate change and green, and diversity, and sustainability, and all those things, our Zeitgeist. And I think the propaganda because for years and years and years. It was just a lot of words and currently, it's mostly still just words, but less. It's the Kabuki theory of those words matters. I think you're right. So that's it. That's it. From anti-wolf Thursday, the opposite of woke Wednesday. Hmm. Any other thoughts before I close this out? Feel the Press. Sorry, I think I depressed us at the last minute. My bad. No, no. The whole thing to president and we always we were dead. That is business pants. We are we'll be back tomorrow. We actually have some fancy expert Clips to play well Clips. Yeah. Because our actual fancy expert. Got covid. I mean who hasn't like? Come on. Yeah. It's like me you well you know we don't know about you like you just discovered Boba. It's like been around. Let's get with it. That's all we got. We'll be back again tomorrow and we'll talk to you then.