 So we're here to discuss the great reset and the Mises Institute tweeted out the details for this event And I retweeted that tweet and some random internet troll Started labeling me as a conspiracy theorist and I thought it's so odd That you get to this point where Klaus Schwab who is the founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum Has written a book that uses the term the great reset in the title And that when you accurately describe what it is that he has said all of a sudden Your descriptive account makes you a conspiracy theorist. It's so strange. It's very odd I also am very happy to have Mike Rectonwald here. I want to point to something I just I spent last week in Mexico and the week before that speaking in Canada and My experience at the customs was was unusual in Canada So Mike says the great reset specifically entails the fourth industrial revolution And there's a spot at the end recess according to architects of the great reset The great reset could also include implanting micro trips or nanobots that would read our report on genetic makeup and brain states and More immediately brain scans such as even crossing a national border right one day Involved a detailed risk of brain scan to assess an individual security risk. Well, that sounds Extreme right that sounds crazy. Well, I can just tell you when I went to the Canadian border I hit the first customs agent and I gave her my passport the way you used to do traditional way she looked at it asked me some questions asked me why I was coming through and I passed the test Went to the next customs agent and this is where you have a window where you would usually get your passport stamped But instead I stood in front of a camera and the camera scanned my face and on her computer screen It popped up my face Alan Mendenhall who I was she looked down at my passport She looked at the screen and she said, okay, you're good like that face scan tells me that you are who you say You aren't so this is not like that for Fetch. We are on on the way to to this sort of State techno society I actually had a friend in that same trip He's an attorney for Alliance defending freedom when he got to the customs agency the customs person said that oh You you are a member of a hate group because the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the Alliance defending freedom Which is a very mainstream Christian conservative litigation arm We they've labeled you a hate group. So we're not going to let you in Eventually he did get in but he got detained and at one in the morning He was finally released and allowed to to leave for his hotel after he was deemed to be not a threat. So This is the direction towards which we're heading my talk today is is sort of a companion talk to a talk I gave at the Austrian economics research conference about a month ago in Auburn but it's also a response to a Law professor at Yale Law School named Jonathan Macy And it's a reputation of Macy because Macy has just published this Article in the Berkeley business law journal and I know alarm bells are going off immediately when you hear Berkeley But in this article he says that ESG Investing reflects a significant libertarian turn in the history of American politics. This is very strange He says the current privately driven ESG movement is highly libertarian because it assumes that the government's current Failings will continue and proposes a path forward that doesn't rely too much on future cost distributions of government I do agree with them that government has a bunch of failures But I don't agree with them that this is privately driven or that it is in any way libertarian But I do want to give you a few more quotes from him so you get a sense of what he is arguing He says the emergence of ESG investing and governments Demonstrates a consensus that government no longer has credibility as an engine of social change That ESG investing in governments can be explained at least in part as a response to the failure of government and that people are turning to Corporations for solutions to problems that are in the proper domain of government because government has failed again I agree that government's failed. I do not believe that This is a privately driven driven thing. He also says new A new broad societal perspective that corporations not government are the main source of solutions to the grave social and moral problems That plague the nation is what makes this movement libertarian He is Completely wrong his proposition that the ESG movement is radically libertarian and posits no government is Exactly opposite of the truth in reverse It's the ESG movement that is radically anti libertarian because it necessarily Posits government so most of you have probably heard of ESG or know what it is But it's an acronym that refers to environmental social and governments and you can understand it in two ways First is a framework or strategy that individual corporations undertake internally So we're gonna institute ESG within our business But the second is a more macro view of ESG it it refers to the non financial standards Metrics are factors that asset management firms financial institutions institutional investors Among others government central bank sovereign well funds consider when they allocate capital or assess risk So macro ESG Which by the way is not the official no enclosures just the term I'm using as a term of convenience Consists of numerous corporations from all industries Responding to major changes and incentives at the macro level the first clear articulation of ESG occurred in 2004 at a conference hosted by the United Nations that the conference was titled who cares wins it was hosted by the United Nations the International Finance Corporation, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank of course the World makes makes loans pursuant to the UN's sustainable development goals and The government of Switzerland specifically its federal department of foreign affairs This does not sound privately driven to me The United Nations consists of a hundred ninety three member states. I think it was a hundred ninety one at the time This conference was held. These are states. These are governments. This is not privately driven ESG involves some private actors, right? It's primarily It primarily involves asset management firms and proxies Proxy advisory firms. Okay, these are the these are the entities that interact with government So a third of private wealth in the world is in capital markets and the world's top 500 asset managers manage over a hundred five trillion dollars of assets the three biggest US asset managers Black Rock State Street and vanguard Together own about 20% of the S&P 500 and they're the largest shareholder and almost 90% of The companies in which they're invested in the S&P 500 Black Rock is the largest asset manager the largest institutional investor. It has over 10 trillion dollars worth of assets under management What are these asset managers do? Well? they're They're supposed to Maximize returns for for the investors right and to do that. They're supposed to assess risk But they have redefined risk to include things like climate change things like Social change and that sort of thing rather than traditional notions of risk Proxy advisory firms these are dangerous because you have those asset managers and they they own all this stock and sometimes competing companies So let's just say hypothetically they may own a massive amount of shares and Burger King and McDonald's well Then they can't vote as a shareholder in ways that would create a conflict of interest So they hire proxy advisory firms to vote firms to to vote on their behalf also These proxy advisory firms They they they engage boards of directors. They tell boards how they should vote because these asset management firms because they own Shares and so many companies. They just can't attend every single annual meeting for every single big company So these proxy advisory firms have to do that on on their behalf and What what are these asset management firms investing? How are they making their money? What where does this money come from? Well, they're investing state pension money. This is government money. They're investing federal pension money This is government money. They're investing sovereign wealth funds, which consists generally of pension money from from foreign governments, but also You know oil money like Saudi Arabia's got got its own sovereign wealth fund Kuwait's got a sovereign wealth fund Norway All these oil rich countries that have government money that they're investing and they're using these large asset management firms to invest their state government money Well to anyone who doubts just on the basis of that that there's a problem here with government driving ESG you can just look at an executive order issued by President Biden and May 2021 in October 2021 after the the executive order was issued his administration released a report talking about how they would implement that executive order and this is what he says in the beginning of the road map This presents an important opportunity for the federal government to partner with the private sector To help capital flow more quickly to enable the transformation needed in this decade So in other words Biden's executive order says that this is the federal government driving Private business now. What did that executive order do it? It it commanded all of these federal agencies to institute ESG what federal agencies? This is just a sampling. We've got the office of science and technology Policy the federal insurance office the National Economic Council the National Climate Advisor We actually have one of those the SEC the federal acquisitions regulatory council the Department of Labor FEMA the Department of Interior The Department of Treasury the OMB the federal insurance office the Department of Agriculture HUD Department of Veterans Affairs It's basically the entire administrative state and what happens if you encode elite of preferences in the Ministry of State We know that this is like a fourth branch of government that operates outside of the other three, right? It has its own executive head it promulgates rules and regulations without the electoral accountability that the regular Legislature was have so it's got a legislative function It has administrative law judges It's got its own judicial branch and this fourth branch of government which contains three branches within it that are completely Unaccountable to electors Operates on the side and grows bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger so that the other three branches become less and less important Last fall to comply with this executive order the federal reserve announced that it would join the six largest banks Bank of America City Group Goldman Sachs JP Morgan Chase Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo in a Climate scenario experiment to test climate related financial risks So all these banks were getting together to work with the Federal Reserve to study how climate was going to change investment strategy It also stated that the federal government Vincent pension and retirement plans can be invested in ESG Go ahead and invest all this federal money into ESG All right, how else are governments driving ESG well they can set guidelines and requirements as in terms of how how to Institute ESG and investment so The most common example to everyone here is the SEC there's a proposed regulation that the SEC has which is Requiring mandatory disclosures mandatory ESG disclosures So if you want to be a publicly traded company you would have to Disclose all this, you know what type of board diversity you have what type of climate mitigation strategies you have whether you're committed to net zero by 2050 all this kind of stuff now This has not been instituted yet, but it's the proposed regulation that's out there with the SEC several countries have Regulations like this that are in the proposed stage an example of the EU has one It's called the non financial reporting directive that would require large companies to disclose non financial information Others would be in In the UK you have the streamline energy and carbon reporting regulations And the task force on climate related financial disclosures again This would require UK companies to report on energy use greenhouse gas admissions energy efficiency all those types of environmental policies if they want to be publicly traded companies the task force on climate related financial disclosures is actually Reliant upon something called the financial stability board which is an international body based in Switzerland that monitors the global financial system It's got 25 member countries. The United States of America is one of those companies Japan has introduced some of these proposed regulations Australia has interested Introduced some of these proposed regulations theirs is called the Australian Securities Exchange Corporate Governance Council and they would require reporting reporting on Different types of activities that go on in the boardroom board membership board Constitution the policies and practices you have in place for diversity equity inclusion your ESG Your your ESG Activities and policies whether you are shifting from the shareholder to stakeholder model of governance Your CEO pay your executive pay and other forms of risk management. So this is broad This is this is requiring companies to disclose a ton of stuff and Canada You have the Canada the Canadian Securities administrators climate change disclosure guidance and the task force on climate related financial Disclosures again same sort of reporting requirements all related to ESG There's one country so far that has made these ESG disclosures mandatory and that's France and There's is article 173-6. It's Roman numeral 6 of the energy transition law And it requires companies to disclose information on their environmental and social impact. It applies to all French investors including pension funds insurers and asset managers that that have assets over a certain threshold So they're required to report things on their carbon emissions fossil fuel extraction power generation Diversity of their board and all kinds of different sustainability measures Now before this ESG movement sort of took hold governments were already doing certain things that are kind of quasi ESG ESG related For example, they were giving tax credits and some subsidies to companies They were doing stuff like solar wind solar power this or that So when the government is instituting Favors and privileges to certain industries over others. That's highly problematic, right? That's highly problematic and that is going to just continue on this ESG front. So The United States does this we've got it for solar wind all kinds of renewal energy The EU has this they have the European Investment Bank which offers loans at favorable rates to companies that basically have good ESG scores the United Kingdom does this Germany does this Japan does this even China does this China as our president used to say Governments can invest in ESG initiatives renewable energy projects green infrastructure social programs This is what the Green New Deal was all about build back better has this stuff in it. You're it's it's all about doing sustainable infrastructure and that includes projects related to renewable energy and greenhouse gas gas emissions Sustainable transportation Wind and solar tax credits and so forth So these are all ways that governments are driving ESG This is not the private sector coming up with ESG in other words. This isn't just private companies talking about Oh, you know, I think I'm going to adopt some leftist political position because that's what's popular in the marketplace and That's what people want to see. No, this is being driven from the top down These are companies that are responding to incentives and pressures that are being created by central governments created by nation states even these large asset management firms when they go in and they're exerting pressures on private companies They're really some some bad bad folks doing doing some of the things they do in companies But they are also responding in part to these pressures. I was at a I was at a dinner It was odd. I was at a dinner and in Washington See in November and I happened to sit next to a Black Rock attorney And it was a place where you wouldn't expect to see a Black Rock attorney and then a week later I was at a dinner and in Alabama and I sat next to another worker from Black Rock And I kind of got worried at that point like what is what is going on here? Because I was speaking out against Black Rock But but Black Rock is the perfect example of a company that is getting in there buying masses amounts of shares and publicly Traded companies and pushing those companies Deliberately to the left now why would these big asset management firms and financial institutions and all the rest be doing this? Well, think about how much it costs small business and medium-sized business to comply with all these ESG reg They can't do it, right? So this is consolidating power among the biggest banks the mid the biggest institutional investors They're they're the ones that stand to benefit from this so if they can work in concert with government to amass power and Direct barriers to entry and push everybody else out. They just stand to get richer and more powerful from that process okay, so Typically, I speak to organizations on the right and talk to people on the right about ESG and in the United States of America That's where the pushback against ESG is coming is coming from Republicans attorneys general from Republicans who are State treasurers which has become a more important office than it used to because we're talking about where state pension Money is getting invested But there are some people on the left that are starting to wake up to this because remember the left used to like not Want big bad corporations to amass all this power? Well, there's still a few of those like remaining the ones that didn't just sell out because they didn't actually believe in anything They just wanted power There are a few of those so an example is there's a there's a professor in England named Carl Rhodes And he wrote a book called woke capitalism and it tells the story of how rich billionaires Tell progressive causes in order to amass more wealth Circumvent the democratic process by irrigating government-backed power to themselves and misleading the public about their real goals There's a term called greenwashing you may have heard and that's when companies go and basically just make up a bunch of stuff about how Environmentally friendly they are so that they get great ESG ratings and there's an entire industry that is sprouted up It's a private industry and they're they're they do ESG ratings They rate companies based on their ESG performance well, what's happening is that these ratings are all over the board and A company that might get an a from one ratings agency might get let's just say a CRD from another So there's inconsistency and what this is doing is this is causing people to cry out for the SEC to intervene That's behind this proposed SEC regulation because people are saying oh, we need the government to step in and say What uniformity it's just uniformity what's going to what's going to count as an ESG factor and also Have the power to force companies to disclose things because these private ESG ratings agencies can't force a company to turn over all these documents It's all voluntary right so people are saying well the SEC will have the power to force people to turn over all these documents and This is dangerous. I mean this is really dangerous But it's it's what's coming and what you're going to see is You're going to see again the biggest most powerful corporations working in concert with government to to a mass power and to build like put built-in Privileges for certain industries if you look at the Biden administration and you look at some BlackRock executives It's a revolving door. There are people who've walked right out of BlackRock into the Biden administration and walked right back into BlackRock and Anybody who pays attention to To how government operates isn't really surprised by this, but it is nevertheless Disturbing now in another talk in another time if I had a lot more time I would talk a lot about how all of this movement is Wokifying corporations pushing corporations into wokeness Forcing them to adopt left-wing causes, but we don't have time to get into that However, you'll just have to take my word for it and and I've written several articles about this And maybe Mike rectum wall will talk a little bit about this as well, but that's part of what's happening That's part of the reason why these companies are going so far to the left even though a vast swath American people aren't Buying into that stuff. They don't like it. You know, they don't they don't want to they don't they don't care about transgender They don't want to take issues on that They don't you know, they don't want to buy deodorant because because somebody put a same-sex married couple in the commercial like no one cares They just want nice deodorant, you know, they don't care about that stuff But it is time for people like us to speak out. I'm really encouraged It's it's a Saturday afternoon on a beautiful sunny day and all of you are in here, right? The desire for human liberty Yes, thank you This is why we will win eventually things look dark. I mean they look as dark as they've ever been But these are the people that are carrying lights into the future The desire for human liberty is innate. It will always be there There will always be people a remnant whatever who are willing to put their lives on the line if necessary To guarantee that there is a future for freedom Barry why some of you may know who this is Not not a conservative by any measure but she was a New York Times reporter who was essentially canceled by the New York Times and took issue with a lot of the editorial policies of the New York Times and Made a made a big stink of it and left and is now affiliated with the the new University of Austin in Texas But she has this wonderful article on wokeness and I just want to read to you kind of the end of this article Because I find it inspiring. She says in an age of lies Telling the truth is high risk It comes with a cost, but it is our moral obligation It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies This bravery isn't the last or only step in opposing this revolution the woke resolution a revolution It's just the first After that must come honest assessments of why America was vulnerable to start with and an aggressive commitment to rebuilding the economy and societies in Ways that once again offer life liberty and pursuit of happiness to the greatest number of Americans But let's start with a little courage Courage means first off the unqualified rejection of lies Do not speak untruths either about yourself or anyone else No matter the comfort offered by the mob and do not genially accept the lies told to you If possible be vocal in rejecting claims, you know to be false Courage can be contagious and your example may serve as a means of transmission When I read those lines, I decided to launch an anti-woke business program at Troy University And let me tell you I didn't know what that was going to do I didn't know what that was going to cause turns out it was the greatest decision. I ever made professionally because Now I'm connected to all these executives all over the country who have emailed and said thanks for standing up This is what I'm doing. This is what you know, I've got somebody that works for a state pension fund Who's giving me all this information about how the state pension funds work on the inside? It's not here in Alabama and And and now I'm getting invited to speak at all these places and I still I went to this sort of clandestine meeting of business executives recently to talk about how we could push back against ESG and I thought Why does this have to be clandestine? If if if the world knew that all of you were in this room together pushing back against ESG Wow, we would have a massive movement like you need to stand up and be public about this Because they need to know that there's a there's an antithesis to the world economic forum They need to know that there are people out there meeting and what was essentially an anti Davos meeting And they need to know that you all think this but they're all so afraid of losing their position and their company are getting fired or Whatever But if we lose that fear if we stand up and all these people that are in position start saying you know what? This is what I think then I think we'll inspire entrepreneurial Alternatives DSG. I think we'll get new Proxery advisory services strive asset management, which is launched by Vivek Ramiswani is a perfect example They provide asset management services, but now they also provide proxy advisory service Services and this is a great entrepreneurial alternative to the sort of the big bad System that we have going on right now and we need a lot more of that as I said There are states pushing back their government's pushing back at the local level and I'm all for federalism I am all for states pushing back But what we really need for long-term success because there is corruption at the state level There is statism at the state level for long-term success we need these private solutions and We need these executives to start standing up and to start Expressing their disagreement with ESG and that requires Everybody to be bolder and braver the the motto for the Mises Institute comes from Virgil's Aeneid I've actually got it right here on this little bracelet this little band on my arm and it's do not give in to evil but proceed ever boldly against it Don't give in but voluntarily walk right into the evil Stand up to it stand up for your principles do the right thing and that means standing up to this ESG craziness that is That is starting to finally lose and it will only continue to lose if people like you in this room start walking boldly into the face of evil and Calling evil for what it is and doing the right thing And I'm so glad that you are all going to do that because you're here on the Saturday So I know you're the type who will do it. Thank you very much