The post States Shouldn’t Play Politics With Their Investments—Period appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

States Shouldn’t Play Politics with Their Investments—Regardless of the Direction The prevalence of state treasurers in the more liberal areas of the country investing their state’s pension money in funds that prioritize environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues makes for bad policy. Such investment priorities are unwise, I’ve argued, because they effectively prioritize social policy over the best interests of the people whose pensions depend on those returns. Many of the states that have been most aggressive in embracing ESG funds for their state’s investments also have sizable pension fund shortfalls, which the politicization of pension investments especially circumspect. Recently, some states where the oil and gas industry have a large presence prohibited their state’s investments from using ESG criteria for investing. Such actions are intuitively seen as direct reactions to steps taken by other states that mandate ESG investment, which some states see as harming fossil fuel companies within their state. For instance, Texas prohibits its insurance companies from using ESG criteria in its investment decisions, and Florida passed a law earlier this year prohibiting the use of ESG factors in state and local government investment decisions and the government contracting processes. However, the Oklahoma Government has taken its opposition to ESG investing one step further—and in doing so is harming its own pensions’ finances in the very same way that liberal states do with their restrictions. Oklahoma State Treasurer Todd Russ recently put forth a list of financial service companies that “boycott the oil and gas industry” by which—consequently—the state will no longer do business with. The list includes several large banks and asset managers that have invested tens of billions of dollars in Oklahoma oil and gas companies and helped hundreds of thousands of pensioners grow their retirement savings. Both restricting investments to funds that have ESG…

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Filed under: News - @ October 11, 2023 5:24 pm