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Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For
A Wall Street cartel has quietly seized control of the American economy, and they are forcing governments and businesses to bow down to their political agenda—using your money to do it. Three Wall Street firms have quietly amassed more money than Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller combined. But the money isn’t even theirs. These asset managers have accumulated all their power through “passive funds,” as most investors no longer believe anyone can reliably pick stocks. Yet the Big Three have decided that they can reliably pick the right social policies instead. As entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy reveals, the results are all bad—and working their way into every corner of the economy. They force US companies to adopt “racial equity audits” and “emissions caps” while supporting human rights atrocities in China. They coerce Western companies to produce less oil while shifting production to dirtier places like Russia. They allow companies like FTX to take victory laps on good management while collapsing like a house of cards. They charge high fees to mom-and-pop investors for so-called sustainable funds that are effectively identical to lower-fee index funds. Worst of all, they’re celebrated as heroes—at least so far. Capitalist Punishment lifts the veil on the largest fiduciary breaches, antitrust abuses, and First Amendment violations of the twenty-first century, misdeeds that are hiding in plain sight. This isn’t just a threat to capitalism. It’s a threat to democratic self-governance itself. Capitalist Punishment is an easy-to-follow educational tour de force for every participant in financial markets—which, to the surprise of most Americans, includes nearly every single one of them.
236 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2023
103 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
April 30, 2023
While it's not the easiest read for someone like myself who doesn't know much about the financial industry's inner workings, Capitalist Punishment is nonetheless an accessible, concise, and thorough work that covers what ESG and stakeholder capitalism is, who the major players are, and how it is being used in business, finance, and government to force unpopular leftist policies on the American people while bypassing our legislative system. It is also exhaustively documented, with 40+ pages of sources at the end of the book, and relatively neutral politically. Vivek does not make his arguments on the basis that the policies promoted by ESG and European-style stakeholder capitalism are wrong, though he clearly thinks they are. Rather, he argues on the bases of fiduciary responsibility to investors and the First Amendment rights of Americans to free association and from being forced to pay for speech they don't agree with. And his arguments are legally airtight. This is a man who knows what he is talking about, and knows how to communicate it in a way that the average person can understand.
I also appreciated that the final chapter of the book is dedicated to practical solutions at all levels, from the average American with a 401k all the way up to state and federal lawmakers and attorneys general. Notably, even though this book is being published in the middle of his 2024 Presidential run, and he has recently started a company called Strive that aims to provide an alternative for investors looking to invest solely on a pecuniary basis, Vivek avoids the temptation to hype himself or his work up for brownie points with Republican voters. He actually goes so far as to encourage others to start similar companies to Strive and increase the amount of competition in that sector of the financial marketplace, a solution which would likely cost him financially--a really classy move, compared to what one might expect from a candidate for political office.
If there were any criticisms I could level at the book, I'd say it was pretty clearly rushed out the door by the editor. The first couple chapters suffer the most from poor organization and chunks that feel like they were rearranged at some point, without removing segments that were already explained or adjusting transitional sentences to make it flow more naturally. That said, this problem does get better in later chapters, and it's a minor quibble.
Overall, I was impressed with how thorough and understandable this book was for someone like me who knows little of finance, and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who has doubts about the direction our country is headed and the forces behind the scenes driving it and getting filthy rich in the process. It's an eye-opener.
I also appreciated that the final chapter of the book is dedicated to practical solutions at all levels, from the average American with a 401k all the way up to state and federal lawmakers and attorneys general. Notably, even though this book is being published in the middle of his 2024 Presidential run, and he has recently started a company called Strive that aims to provide an alternative for investors looking to invest solely on a pecuniary basis, Vivek avoids the temptation to hype himself or his work up for brownie points with Republican voters. He actually goes so far as to encourage others to start similar companies to Strive and increase the amount of competition in that sector of the financial marketplace, a solution which would likely cost him financially--a really classy move, compared to what one might expect from a candidate for political office.
If there were any criticisms I could level at the book, I'd say it was pretty clearly rushed out the door by the editor. The first couple chapters suffer the most from poor organization and chunks that feel like they were rearranged at some point, without removing segments that were already explained or adjusting transitional sentences to make it flow more naturally. That said, this problem does get better in later chapters, and it's a minor quibble.
Overall, I was impressed with how thorough and understandable this book was for someone like me who knows little of finance, and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who has doubts about the direction our country is headed and the forces behind the scenes driving it and getting filthy rich in the process. It's an eye-opener.
May 1, 2023
ESG (Environment, Sustainability, Governance) is a scam, says Vivek Ramaswamy. Of course it is. That is self-evident. But in Capitalist Punishment, he claims that ESG is the biggest swindle of all time. That takes some serious explaining.
The purpose of ESG is to give companies and institutions ratings on how they are doing in those three categories. Ramaswamy says ESG boils down to “corporate executives should direct and coordinate the interests of all society’s members.” He positions it as The World Economic Forum at Davos running the world for its billionaire members’ financial benefit.
Meanwhile, the US government is stepping up demands for those ratings to drive environmental policy (instead of passing laws to do so). This causes obvious conflicts, as company presidents have to mouth the platitudes of environmentalism and sustainability, while also searching for more fossil fuels to burn.
That is bad, of course, but then Wall St piled on to rake off unimaginable profits from it too. The big three investment fund companies (Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard) started renaming their funds ESG or Sustainable. They didn’t necessarily change the securities the funds owned, just the names of the funds. Garden-variety lies. Then they started bleating to the public about how environmentally conscious they were. More lies. They began claiming investor returns would be higher by doing good. Laughable lies.
Readers might think that simply changing the name would not have any effect on performance and therefore profit. But ESG turned out to be a license to double the management fees for those funds. Again, with no change in the funds themselves. (Like fake organic produce: change the label, hike the price.) Failing funds suddenly began raking in massive new deposits. And at their scale – the big three speak for stock and debt worth nearly half the GDP of the world – a fraction of a percentage point is worth billions every year.
Worse, people who bought some of those regular funds, suddenly found themselves in ESG funds and did not want to be. And worse still, others bought ESG funds thinking they would be part of the solution. Instead, their pension or 401(k) money went to policies abhorrent to them (with the bonus of de facto corporate management of life around the world). The result is the biggest windfall in history.
The value Ramaswamy adds to this cauldron of deceit is its legality, or lack thereof. Among the endless laws regulating Wall St., there are statutes that require Wall St. to have a single goal: maximizing customer returns (The sole-interest rule). This means no distractions from making the most money for their customers. But ESG does not make money for companies. It costs them foregone profits and so lowers payouts.
This forced focus shift is therefore strictly illegal. Yet it is mandated by the federal government. Everyone is contorting to fit into this new model, but it is literally impossible, as well as clearly illegal.
This makes Ramaswamy’s main point constitutional, an excellent place to base an attack. Financial managers have a fiduciary duty to investors. Financial managers have no business managing other businesses they patronize. Investors should rightly fear when financial managers claim to devise global social policies. Great point.
A second great constitutional point of his is that buyers cannot be forced to join in if they don’t like the investment for moral or religious reasons. And yet, this is exactly what is going on, bigger than ever before. Customer money is being used in a global campaign to restructure the world. That was never the deal.
ESG leads to self-contradictions. On one level, for example, it means convincing Agriculture to adopt sustainable practices in producing their palm oil. At the same time, Wall St. rails against nonsustainable sources of palm oil as companies clear whole rainforests to grow this one species of tree.
On another level, Wall St has to lie to some of the biggest companies in the world, that they love to see profits rise and they wouldn’t dream of telling them how to run their business. Yet later that same day, they might testify before Congress that their primary concern and highest priority is using their financial leverage and sheer size to get management in line with ESG, globally. Choose the lie you prefer.
More hypocrisy comes in the ”protection racket” (as Ramaswamy calls it) where the official ESG ratings for every company come into play. It reeks of the same corruption as in rating corporate debt. Subscribe or your rating might not come out so well. There are no fixed rules, so one ratings firm can rate a company completely differently from another. Regardless, both rake in big bucks annually to keep rating them. Ramaswamy cites Facebook, which is rated in the top four percent by one rating firm, and the bottom one percent by another. “Reliable” does not leap to mind for ESG ratings.
So this whole ESG approach is apparently just wrong, morally, legally, and constitutionally. Elected government should be the body implementing such policy, not Wall St.
I have three criticisms of Capitalist Punishment. First, Ramaswamy sees fit to be snide. He loves to insert unhelpful jabs at President Biden or Senator Bernie Sanders, for example. He describes the long term drop in fees and how it has added wealth to union pensions: “Bernie would be proud, if he understood it.” There’s plenty of place for that, but this is supposedly a serious exposé, fully end-noted and verifiable. Or is it?
My second objection is it transpires that Ramaswamy has recently started his own firm to compete directly with Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard and Invesco. That makes this seemingly legitimate legal argument into a long commercial for his better-value, really non-ESG funds. That’s a problem. He saves this disclosure for the end of the book. Had he been up front about it, it would have changed everything, maybe for the better as he could be an “expert.” Hiding it until the end, not so good. Can you trust anything from this Wall Streeter?
But three, that is nothing compared to what he did next. Just a month after I wrote this this review, Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. It just taints the book beyond redemption. Now the attacks on Bernie Sanders et al look very different. I feel used for having agreed to review this screed - now clearly biased in aid of his presidential campaign.
The book ends with fireworks, as Ramaswamy takes on Larry Fink, head of Blackrock and one of the richest men in the world: “In my opinion, Fink masterminded the largest financial scam in modern history. His fraud is on a scale at least three orders of magnitude greater than that of Sam Bankman-Fried, impacting tens of millions of people in the United States alone. Yet rather than jail time, he’s been rewarded with a board seat on the World Economic Forum at Davos and eight-figure compensation packages, while US citizens are left holding the bag.”
Just another day on Wall St.
David Wineberg
(Capitalist Punishment, Vivek Ramaswamy, April 2023)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
The purpose of ESG is to give companies and institutions ratings on how they are doing in those three categories. Ramaswamy says ESG boils down to “corporate executives should direct and coordinate the interests of all society’s members.” He positions it as The World Economic Forum at Davos running the world for its billionaire members’ financial benefit.
Meanwhile, the US government is stepping up demands for those ratings to drive environmental policy (instead of passing laws to do so). This causes obvious conflicts, as company presidents have to mouth the platitudes of environmentalism and sustainability, while also searching for more fossil fuels to burn.
That is bad, of course, but then Wall St piled on to rake off unimaginable profits from it too. The big three investment fund companies (Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard) started renaming their funds ESG or Sustainable. They didn’t necessarily change the securities the funds owned, just the names of the funds. Garden-variety lies. Then they started bleating to the public about how environmentally conscious they were. More lies. They began claiming investor returns would be higher by doing good. Laughable lies.
Readers might think that simply changing the name would not have any effect on performance and therefore profit. But ESG turned out to be a license to double the management fees for those funds. Again, with no change in the funds themselves. (Like fake organic produce: change the label, hike the price.) Failing funds suddenly began raking in massive new deposits. And at their scale – the big three speak for stock and debt worth nearly half the GDP of the world – a fraction of a percentage point is worth billions every year.
Worse, people who bought some of those regular funds, suddenly found themselves in ESG funds and did not want to be. And worse still, others bought ESG funds thinking they would be part of the solution. Instead, their pension or 401(k) money went to policies abhorrent to them (with the bonus of de facto corporate management of life around the world). The result is the biggest windfall in history.
The value Ramaswamy adds to this cauldron of deceit is its legality, or lack thereof. Among the endless laws regulating Wall St., there are statutes that require Wall St. to have a single goal: maximizing customer returns (The sole-interest rule). This means no distractions from making the most money for their customers. But ESG does not make money for companies. It costs them foregone profits and so lowers payouts.
This forced focus shift is therefore strictly illegal. Yet it is mandated by the federal government. Everyone is contorting to fit into this new model, but it is literally impossible, as well as clearly illegal.
This makes Ramaswamy’s main point constitutional, an excellent place to base an attack. Financial managers have a fiduciary duty to investors. Financial managers have no business managing other businesses they patronize. Investors should rightly fear when financial managers claim to devise global social policies. Great point.
A second great constitutional point of his is that buyers cannot be forced to join in if they don’t like the investment for moral or religious reasons. And yet, this is exactly what is going on, bigger than ever before. Customer money is being used in a global campaign to restructure the world. That was never the deal.
ESG leads to self-contradictions. On one level, for example, it means convincing Agriculture to adopt sustainable practices in producing their palm oil. At the same time, Wall St. rails against nonsustainable sources of palm oil as companies clear whole rainforests to grow this one species of tree.
On another level, Wall St has to lie to some of the biggest companies in the world, that they love to see profits rise and they wouldn’t dream of telling them how to run their business. Yet later that same day, they might testify before Congress that their primary concern and highest priority is using their financial leverage and sheer size to get management in line with ESG, globally. Choose the lie you prefer.
More hypocrisy comes in the ”protection racket” (as Ramaswamy calls it) where the official ESG ratings for every company come into play. It reeks of the same corruption as in rating corporate debt. Subscribe or your rating might not come out so well. There are no fixed rules, so one ratings firm can rate a company completely differently from another. Regardless, both rake in big bucks annually to keep rating them. Ramaswamy cites Facebook, which is rated in the top four percent by one rating firm, and the bottom one percent by another. “Reliable” does not leap to mind for ESG ratings.
So this whole ESG approach is apparently just wrong, morally, legally, and constitutionally. Elected government should be the body implementing such policy, not Wall St.
I have three criticisms of Capitalist Punishment. First, Ramaswamy sees fit to be snide. He loves to insert unhelpful jabs at President Biden or Senator Bernie Sanders, for example. He describes the long term drop in fees and how it has added wealth to union pensions: “Bernie would be proud, if he understood it.” There’s plenty of place for that, but this is supposedly a serious exposé, fully end-noted and verifiable. Or is it?
My second objection is it transpires that Ramaswamy has recently started his own firm to compete directly with Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard and Invesco. That makes this seemingly legitimate legal argument into a long commercial for his better-value, really non-ESG funds. That’s a problem. He saves this disclosure for the end of the book. Had he been up front about it, it would have changed everything, maybe for the better as he could be an “expert.” Hiding it until the end, not so good. Can you trust anything from this Wall Streeter?
But three, that is nothing compared to what he did next. Just a month after I wrote this this review, Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. It just taints the book beyond redemption. Now the attacks on Bernie Sanders et al look very different. I feel used for having agreed to review this screed - now clearly biased in aid of his presidential campaign.
The book ends with fireworks, as Ramaswamy takes on Larry Fink, head of Blackrock and one of the richest men in the world: “In my opinion, Fink masterminded the largest financial scam in modern history. His fraud is on a scale at least three orders of magnitude greater than that of Sam Bankman-Fried, impacting tens of millions of people in the United States alone. Yet rather than jail time, he’s been rewarded with a board seat on the World Economic Forum at Davos and eight-figure compensation packages, while US citizens are left holding the bag.”
Just another day on Wall St.
David Wineberg
(Capitalist Punishment, Vivek Ramaswamy, April 2023)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
July 3, 2023
If you are a skeptic of the ESG movement—and I am—this book will arm you with excellent, empirically grounded—by law and economics—evidence that this movement is more hype than substance. Vivek’s first book, Woke, Inc., was an excellent beginning, but this book takes the criticisms to a new level. There’s no way to do this book justice with a short review. There are many layers to it, but I will attempt to provide some highlights. If you’re interested, my colleague, Ed Kless, and I did an episode discussing this book, which you can listen to here: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/444
Vivek begins the Introduction with some questions: “Want your retirement funds to be used to force US tech companies to adopt racial hiring quotas? Or to force US energy companies to produce less oil to fight climate change? Did you know that a prominent ESG ratings firm assigned a higher leadership and governance score to FTX than it did to ExxonMobil. How does this happen? Because the scoring are not true measurements, they are metrics—meaning they are completely subjective depending on the assumptions and weightings you assume. Vivek writes that Sam Bankman Fried wasn’t an exception to the rule but an embodiment of it.
Vivek makes a distinction between Greenwashing and Green Smuggling. Greenwashing is fraudulent since it tells investors that they are getting one thing when in fact they are getting another. But greenwashing isn’t the biggest ESG scam. The real problem is the inverse: Greensmuggling: occurs when non-ESG funds smuggle ESG policies into their investment practices. Unlike greenwashing, the greensmuggling problem is over $100 trillion in scale. Arizona’s attorney general in 2022 called ESG “the biggest antitrust violation in history.” If the CEOs of the largest US oil companies were to get together in a closed-door conference room and decide to slash oil production, they’d go to jail for price-fixing. But the largest shareholders of those companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Marathon—are the Big Three investment funds (Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard). Those asset managers are working together to pressure all of those companies to cut oil production, not to mention disclose so-called “Scope 3 emissions, which “makes as much business sense as McDonald’s assuming responsibility for reducing the body weight of anyone who eats a Big Mac.” They forced Apple to conduct a racial equity audit in its workforce. Apple’s board opposed the proposal. BlackRock and State Street voted for it. Apple is conducting that racial equity audit. “BlackRock is among the top shareholders of Xiaomi, the largest smartphone producer China. Apple’s workforce looks like a multicultural kaleidoscope compared to Xiaomi, yet there’s no public record of BlackRock calling for the latter to conduct a racial equity audit, or how equitably the firm treats its Uyghur compatriots.” Sri Lanka in 2021 banned nonorganic fertilizers. It was showered with praise from environmental groups. Then the country’s economy collapsed. Crops were devastated, food prices soared, and people began to starve. Fuel became scarce. There were rolling blackouts. Three years later, Sri Lanka’s desperate financial situation has not improved, but its ESG score has: it now boasts a near-perfect ESG rating of 98.1.
Chapter 1 is What Is ESG? ESG, a term was first used in 2004 by the United Nations Global Compact, a sustainability initiative announced five years earlier at Davos in an address to the World Economic Forum. ESG has two ancestors: CSR and SRI. “Corporate social responsibility”; it brought tenets of stakeholder capitalism into corporate boardrooms. SRI stands for “socially responsible investing”; it brought stakeholder capitalism into capital markets, shaping investor behavior. The economist Howard R. Bowen coined the term corporate social responsibility in his 1953 book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, but the idea didn’t really catch on until the 1970s. Milton Friedman’s vision of shareholder capitalism required corporations to maximize profit within society’s rules, but stakeholder capitalism requires them to profit by creating the rules. It becomes the corporation’s social responsibility to pass unpopular policies precisely because the government can’t pass them. Vivek writes that ESG is “The traffic cop that writes tickets to enforce stakeholder capitalism.” He adds: “In a liquid global market, when one party divests from an activity for a noneconomic reason, it simply creates an opportunity for another party to collect a higher rate of return by investing in that activity for purely economic reasons. “ What’s best for a company isn’t automatically what’s best for each of its employees. Saying that what’s best for all stakeholders in the long run is necessarily also best for shareholders is simply wishful thinking.
BlackRock leverages the massive weight of all the billions in its non-ESG funds to convince gun sellers not to sell guns, for instance. The millions of investors in those funds, many of them gun owners, had never signed up for that; they just wanted diversification and profit. BlackRock’s companywide commitment to ESG made it smuggle social activism into all its funds. ESG proponents have even come up with a name for this IFSI, “investing for sustainability impact.” Instead of avoiding sinful companies, invest in them, then make them less sinful by imposing ESG policies on them. It’s just a new name for stakeholder capitalism. As he says, “When BlackRock and others respond to critics by saying that they’re not divesting from oil and gas, they’re right. The real problem isn’t that the likes of BlackRock are divesting from ExxonMobil and Chevron; it’s that they’re invested in ExxonMobil and Chevron and slowly changing the essence of what those companies do.”
Acronymic capitalism will obviously increase shareholder profit: ESG. DEI. CSR. SRI. PRI. SDG, IFSI. It’s mind numbing, and I love his take on this: “This is what it looks like when an institution is captured by an ideology. It’s just an extensive apparatus to eliminate political dissent from the global marketplace. One way to steal from people is to distract them from what you’re doing. A safer way is to bore them. Then they’ll distract themselves.”
Each chapter from there explains another layer of complexity when you begin to peel this onion. It will leave you crying, because this is an enormous waste of society’s resources. After all, if ESG was so damn good, you wouldn’t need government regulations or laws to enforce it. It’s politics disguised as investment.
In Chapter 10 he lays out possible solutions, though I might label them tradeoffs. He suggests that private and public Attorneys General engage in litigation: “Plan participants may be able to sue their pension boards to vindicate both their rights under trust law’s sole interest rule and their First Amendment right not to have their retirement money be devoted to political objectives with which they disagree. A lawsuit could also be brought against the Big Three themselves. Litigation to promote disclosure and consent is another promising strategy. One potential remedy is for investors to ask for a refund for the fees they’ve paid. Why should investment advisors and asset managers get to keep their ill-gotten fees? The legal term for this is disgorgement, and courts have recognized it as a possible remedy for fiduciary breaches.” Another is Competitors: Market Alternatives, one reason Vivek founded the Strive Asset Fund, but there are many others, such as Devout Catholics invest and exclude companies that donate to Planned Parenthood; Muslim exclude companies whose practices violate Shariah law (Nasdaq: HLAL); a pro-American may want to exclude companies that offshore US jobs (e.g., New York Stock Exchange: YALL). Some investors are fine with sacrificing investment return to ensure that they do not hold securities in companies that are antithetical to their values.
Vivek also suggests that, arguably, Larry Fink masterminded the largest financial scam in modern history. BlackRock amassed trillions of dollars by promising non-ESG clients that it would invest their money with purely financial interests in mind, yet its largest index fund, iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, for example, expressly states, “This fund does not seek to follow a sustainable, impact or ESG investment strategy.” Yet as one of BlackRock’s many “sustainable investing” pages touts, BlackRock integrates ESG “across all our portfolios,” including in its ESG-disavowing index funds. “Its new Voting Choice program, as you’ve read, purports to allow clients to take back their ballots and vote their own shares. But the program is available to only a fraction of clients. And does nothing to address the soft engagements that BlackRock enters into.
Vivek suggests that BlackRock should force Larry Fink to step down as CEO. In December 2022, North Carolina’s treasurer did so—as did BlackRock’s former sustainable investment chief, who called his former boss an “emperor with no clothes” who has “lock[ed] himself in the bathroom” rather than “enter the [ESG] debate to clarify what he’s saying.” So far, BlackRock has refused, saying “It is absurd [to] suggest a chief executive step down who has delivered a cumulative total return to shareholders over 23 years of 7,700%—the best performing financial firm in the S&P.” Yet BlackRock’s response may be the more absurd suggestion—ironically, by touting its own stock price. It is almost as if it admits that shareholders really care only about long-term financial metrics yet imposes different, value-laden objectives on portfolio companies anyway.
One very real possibility is for it to break itself into two: BlackRock Financial and BlackRock ESG. It’s the only way for it to be truly loyal to its ESG and non-ESG clients alike.
Here’s his conclusions, which I find compelling:
“Taken together, with their $20 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street control the equivalent of about 20 percent of global GDP. The Big Three may not have armies at their disposal, but they have more power over all of corporate America than any other person or entity, private or governmental, has ever had before.”
“The phrase threat to democracy is wildly overused today. ESG is a usurpation of democracy. This should not be a partisan issue. Dangers of excessive corporate power have historically been a core concern more for the Left than for the Right.”
“If instead of ESG, Wall Street were forcing corporate America to deny medical coverage for gender transitions or to make employees acknowledge that biological sex is a fact, progressives would be up in arms. Democratic attorneys general would be making the same fiduciary duty arguments that today only Republican attorneys general advance.”
Don’t expect the proponents of ESG to answer these arguments. They can’t. Perhaps this is why Larry Fink recently said he’s not going to use the term ESG anymore because it has been weaponized. Expect old wine to come out in new bottles. But no matter what they label it, it’s still corked wine.
Vivek begins the Introduction with some questions: “Want your retirement funds to be used to force US tech companies to adopt racial hiring quotas? Or to force US energy companies to produce less oil to fight climate change? Did you know that a prominent ESG ratings firm assigned a higher leadership and governance score to FTX than it did to ExxonMobil. How does this happen? Because the scoring are not true measurements, they are metrics—meaning they are completely subjective depending on the assumptions and weightings you assume. Vivek writes that Sam Bankman Fried wasn’t an exception to the rule but an embodiment of it.
Vivek makes a distinction between Greenwashing and Green Smuggling. Greenwashing is fraudulent since it tells investors that they are getting one thing when in fact they are getting another. But greenwashing isn’t the biggest ESG scam. The real problem is the inverse: Greensmuggling: occurs when non-ESG funds smuggle ESG policies into their investment practices. Unlike greenwashing, the greensmuggling problem is over $100 trillion in scale. Arizona’s attorney general in 2022 called ESG “the biggest antitrust violation in history.” If the CEOs of the largest US oil companies were to get together in a closed-door conference room and decide to slash oil production, they’d go to jail for price-fixing. But the largest shareholders of those companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Marathon—are the Big Three investment funds (Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard). Those asset managers are working together to pressure all of those companies to cut oil production, not to mention disclose so-called “Scope 3 emissions, which “makes as much business sense as McDonald’s assuming responsibility for reducing the body weight of anyone who eats a Big Mac.” They forced Apple to conduct a racial equity audit in its workforce. Apple’s board opposed the proposal. BlackRock and State Street voted for it. Apple is conducting that racial equity audit. “BlackRock is among the top shareholders of Xiaomi, the largest smartphone producer China. Apple’s workforce looks like a multicultural kaleidoscope compared to Xiaomi, yet there’s no public record of BlackRock calling for the latter to conduct a racial equity audit, or how equitably the firm treats its Uyghur compatriots.” Sri Lanka in 2021 banned nonorganic fertilizers. It was showered with praise from environmental groups. Then the country’s economy collapsed. Crops were devastated, food prices soared, and people began to starve. Fuel became scarce. There were rolling blackouts. Three years later, Sri Lanka’s desperate financial situation has not improved, but its ESG score has: it now boasts a near-perfect ESG rating of 98.1.
Chapter 1 is What Is ESG? ESG, a term was first used in 2004 by the United Nations Global Compact, a sustainability initiative announced five years earlier at Davos in an address to the World Economic Forum. ESG has two ancestors: CSR and SRI. “Corporate social responsibility”; it brought tenets of stakeholder capitalism into corporate boardrooms. SRI stands for “socially responsible investing”; it brought stakeholder capitalism into capital markets, shaping investor behavior. The economist Howard R. Bowen coined the term corporate social responsibility in his 1953 book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, but the idea didn’t really catch on until the 1970s. Milton Friedman’s vision of shareholder capitalism required corporations to maximize profit within society’s rules, but stakeholder capitalism requires them to profit by creating the rules. It becomes the corporation’s social responsibility to pass unpopular policies precisely because the government can’t pass them. Vivek writes that ESG is “The traffic cop that writes tickets to enforce stakeholder capitalism.” He adds: “In a liquid global market, when one party divests from an activity for a noneconomic reason, it simply creates an opportunity for another party to collect a higher rate of return by investing in that activity for purely economic reasons. “ What’s best for a company isn’t automatically what’s best for each of its employees. Saying that what’s best for all stakeholders in the long run is necessarily also best for shareholders is simply wishful thinking.
BlackRock leverages the massive weight of all the billions in its non-ESG funds to convince gun sellers not to sell guns, for instance. The millions of investors in those funds, many of them gun owners, had never signed up for that; they just wanted diversification and profit. BlackRock’s companywide commitment to ESG made it smuggle social activism into all its funds. ESG proponents have even come up with a name for this IFSI, “investing for sustainability impact.” Instead of avoiding sinful companies, invest in them, then make them less sinful by imposing ESG policies on them. It’s just a new name for stakeholder capitalism. As he says, “When BlackRock and others respond to critics by saying that they’re not divesting from oil and gas, they’re right. The real problem isn’t that the likes of BlackRock are divesting from ExxonMobil and Chevron; it’s that they’re invested in ExxonMobil and Chevron and slowly changing the essence of what those companies do.”
Acronymic capitalism will obviously increase shareholder profit: ESG. DEI. CSR. SRI. PRI. SDG, IFSI. It’s mind numbing, and I love his take on this: “This is what it looks like when an institution is captured by an ideology. It’s just an extensive apparatus to eliminate political dissent from the global marketplace. One way to steal from people is to distract them from what you’re doing. A safer way is to bore them. Then they’ll distract themselves.”
Each chapter from there explains another layer of complexity when you begin to peel this onion. It will leave you crying, because this is an enormous waste of society’s resources. After all, if ESG was so damn good, you wouldn’t need government regulations or laws to enforce it. It’s politics disguised as investment.
In Chapter 10 he lays out possible solutions, though I might label them tradeoffs. He suggests that private and public Attorneys General engage in litigation: “Plan participants may be able to sue their pension boards to vindicate both their rights under trust law’s sole interest rule and their First Amendment right not to have their retirement money be devoted to political objectives with which they disagree. A lawsuit could also be brought against the Big Three themselves. Litigation to promote disclosure and consent is another promising strategy. One potential remedy is for investors to ask for a refund for the fees they’ve paid. Why should investment advisors and asset managers get to keep their ill-gotten fees? The legal term for this is disgorgement, and courts have recognized it as a possible remedy for fiduciary breaches.” Another is Competitors: Market Alternatives, one reason Vivek founded the Strive Asset Fund, but there are many others, such as Devout Catholics invest and exclude companies that donate to Planned Parenthood; Muslim exclude companies whose practices violate Shariah law (Nasdaq: HLAL); a pro-American may want to exclude companies that offshore US jobs (e.g., New York Stock Exchange: YALL). Some investors are fine with sacrificing investment return to ensure that they do not hold securities in companies that are antithetical to their values.
Vivek also suggests that, arguably, Larry Fink masterminded the largest financial scam in modern history. BlackRock amassed trillions of dollars by promising non-ESG clients that it would invest their money with purely financial interests in mind, yet its largest index fund, iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, for example, expressly states, “This fund does not seek to follow a sustainable, impact or ESG investment strategy.” Yet as one of BlackRock’s many “sustainable investing” pages touts, BlackRock integrates ESG “across all our portfolios,” including in its ESG-disavowing index funds. “Its new Voting Choice program, as you’ve read, purports to allow clients to take back their ballots and vote their own shares. But the program is available to only a fraction of clients. And does nothing to address the soft engagements that BlackRock enters into.
Vivek suggests that BlackRock should force Larry Fink to step down as CEO. In December 2022, North Carolina’s treasurer did so—as did BlackRock’s former sustainable investment chief, who called his former boss an “emperor with no clothes” who has “lock[ed] himself in the bathroom” rather than “enter the [ESG] debate to clarify what he’s saying.” So far, BlackRock has refused, saying “It is absurd [to] suggest a chief executive step down who has delivered a cumulative total return to shareholders over 23 years of 7,700%—the best performing financial firm in the S&P.” Yet BlackRock’s response may be the more absurd suggestion—ironically, by touting its own stock price. It is almost as if it admits that shareholders really care only about long-term financial metrics yet imposes different, value-laden objectives on portfolio companies anyway.
One very real possibility is for it to break itself into two: BlackRock Financial and BlackRock ESG. It’s the only way for it to be truly loyal to its ESG and non-ESG clients alike.
Here’s his conclusions, which I find compelling:
“Taken together, with their $20 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street control the equivalent of about 20 percent of global GDP. The Big Three may not have armies at their disposal, but they have more power over all of corporate America than any other person or entity, private or governmental, has ever had before.”
“The phrase threat to democracy is wildly overused today. ESG is a usurpation of democracy. This should not be a partisan issue. Dangers of excessive corporate power have historically been a core concern more for the Left than for the Right.”
“If instead of ESG, Wall Street were forcing corporate America to deny medical coverage for gender transitions or to make employees acknowledge that biological sex is a fact, progressives would be up in arms. Democratic attorneys general would be making the same fiduciary duty arguments that today only Republican attorneys general advance.”
Don’t expect the proponents of ESG to answer these arguments. They can’t. Perhaps this is why Larry Fink recently said he’s not going to use the term ESG anymore because it has been weaponized. Expect old wine to come out in new bottles. But no matter what they label it, it’s still corked wine.
August 3, 2023
The WEF likes to carry on endlessly about environmental social governance or better known as ESG.
Large companies and the major funds managers are falling over backwards to try and gain a high ESG score.
What is ESG and is it a scam?
Vivek tells us it is a giant scam that masquerades as a better way of running capitalism but in reality is nothing more than a group of funds trying to gain more money and power and control the world policy narrative.
Those funds are Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street with Blackrock run by Larry Fink at the top of the heap.
These 3 funds have acted in effect as an illegal cartel, creating an ESG bubble and pushing agendas like climate change action onto many companies affecting their bottom lines without the approval of shareholders.
For example having oil companies cut back on production in the west yet encourage China's Petrogas who Blackrock holds a large shareholding in to drill a project they forced Chevron out of.
To understand how this is hypocritical one must read the book.
As cartels are illegal this must be stopped and Vivek gives some suggestions on how to curb it.
Large companies and the major funds managers are falling over backwards to try and gain a high ESG score.
What is ESG and is it a scam?
Vivek tells us it is a giant scam that masquerades as a better way of running capitalism but in reality is nothing more than a group of funds trying to gain more money and power and control the world policy narrative.
Those funds are Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street with Blackrock run by Larry Fink at the top of the heap.
These 3 funds have acted in effect as an illegal cartel, creating an ESG bubble and pushing agendas like climate change action onto many companies affecting their bottom lines without the approval of shareholders.
For example having oil companies cut back on production in the west yet encourage China's Petrogas who Blackrock holds a large shareholding in to drill a project they forced Chevron out of.
To understand how this is hypocritical one must read the book.
As cartels are illegal this must be stopped and Vivek gives some suggestions on how to curb it.
November 8, 2023
You can also read this review on my blog https://berkough.com/capitalist-punis...
So, this book has its ups and downs. It started off strong. About half-way through I wasn't feeling it, but pushed through. By the end I was satisfied with the book, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about getting other people to read it. If you like what he has to say in interviews, then I would recommend the book though. He goes into some depth regarding his philosophy on how markets should be governed.
Let's get the worst things about this book out of the way first. It's almost exactly like Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Which is interesting if you're looking at the two books side-by-side, considering Klein definitely approaches the situation from a very left-leaning perspective. Ramaswamy is, conversely, a Friedman-type (closer to David than his father Milton though). Regardless, they are very much the same type of book. Both look at the woes of the market from an "othering" perspective and proceed to demonize the faceless "Wall Street." And neither book has any real good solutions with how to deal with this dilemma. Or, in the least, I didn’t feel like there was much of any solution present. That being said, it did get me to think about my own personal finances, which is why I went with four stars. These are difficult questions to navigate, especially when blown up to macro-economic scales. I would like to think that I have some good answers for how shit should be done, but the reality is that I, as one man, do not have all the information necessary to formulate a grand strategy.
I do like this book a little bit more than Klein's offering, if only for the fact that Ramaswamy is seemingly willing to take action and put his money where his mouth is. This book is practically a giant advertisement for Ramaswamy's investment company, Strive, a competitor to Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street... Or at least that's the idea. Whether or not his business works is another thing entirely. I'm not mad about that. He got me to read the whole fucking book, and I came away thinking about this stuff in a new way. I personally have my retirement with Vanguard, but realistically, my accounts are less than a rounding error for them. Nevertheless, I will take a closer look at how the mutual funds that I've bought into are being invested.
So what is this book about? Well, in short it's about how terrible ESG is; as an investment strategy, as a rating system, and how it is being applied to the greater economic system. I don't disagree with Ramaswamy, Klaus Schwab is clearly a fucking Bond Villian, full-stop (no, I will not eat the bugs). But, here's the thing, it's extremely easy to demonize what's already going on, and it's easy to criticize efforts of some to try and shift the paradigm in a direction they think will save the planet, save the species, etc. There are really only three different perspectives to the matter; either you think "it's all a sham," "it's all intentionally opaque," or "the kool-aid tastes great."
If it's all a sham, and financial titans are playing us for fools with a shell game, or three-card monty, then maybe we deserve it for not waking up to the con sooner, or coming up with a better solution. On the other hand, it could be intentionally opaque and therefore is actually a really smart way to deal with money, because most of us are pretty stupid and the average person doesn't have the mental space to think about how the economy works. Lastly, maybe you are a smart individual and you can see the benefits of trying to build a system around different principals other than the ones we currently use. I honestly don't think it's entirely just a re-branding of business as usual. However, what I don't particularly care for is the idea that ESG scores can be weaponized against businesses, rather than being a guide for the public at large to make a determination for themselves which businesses they want to support.
One of the big issues that Vivek points out is that the ratings boards aren't really independent organizations, but self-policing happens in a lot of industries. It should still be done in a more transparent manner and open to critique. I think the main concern is that the system is being perverted through an echo chamber. If the goals of ESG are noble ones, and it's not just a way to placate and control the masses, there will be room for people to invest in companies with poor ESG scores, and if ESG is really what the market wants, those will be the companies that survive into the next generation, ESG will therefore be a good indicator of a business’ worth. But we have to be involved, otherwise there’s no reason for anyone to listen to a different perspective. We’re all in this together as a species. Regardless of whether or not you think Climate Change and EDI are boogeymen invented by the elites, there’s nothing wrong with being concerned about the effect that we each have on the planet. Ted Turner had already thought of that, that’s why he started indoctrinating us as children with Captain Planet. I used to love that cartoon, and I do feel bad about littering.
Not everybody is going to be vegan, that’s a pipedream, maybe it’s about learning how to convert cow farts into something that isn’t warming up our planet, eh? There has to be some fucking middle ground. But I’m pushing for the capacity for every household to have two steaks per person at least two nights a week. Is the 3D printed meat going to win the awards? What about the company that is growing the meat from cultured cells? There’s definitely room in the market for people who want to eat 3D printed meat.
Ultimately, that was my takeaway. Even though Rawmaswamy complains about Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, and tries to call them on their bluff about the ESG stuff, he also is honestly advocating for a market system that lets ESG compete against whatever else might emerge as a ratings system. But this is what we do as humans, and that’s why game theory exists. We’re still a bunch of talking apes trying to out-compete each other in different and measurable ways. As the years go by and successive generations come and go, we’re refining the experience both as individuals and collectively.
So, this book has its ups and downs. It started off strong. About half-way through I wasn't feeling it, but pushed through. By the end I was satisfied with the book, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about getting other people to read it. If you like what he has to say in interviews, then I would recommend the book though. He goes into some depth regarding his philosophy on how markets should be governed.
Let's get the worst things about this book out of the way first. It's almost exactly like Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Which is interesting if you're looking at the two books side-by-side, considering Klein definitely approaches the situation from a very left-leaning perspective. Ramaswamy is, conversely, a Friedman-type (closer to David than his father Milton though). Regardless, they are very much the same type of book. Both look at the woes of the market from an "othering" perspective and proceed to demonize the faceless "Wall Street." And neither book has any real good solutions with how to deal with this dilemma. Or, in the least, I didn’t feel like there was much of any solution present. That being said, it did get me to think about my own personal finances, which is why I went with four stars. These are difficult questions to navigate, especially when blown up to macro-economic scales. I would like to think that I have some good answers for how shit should be done, but the reality is that I, as one man, do not have all the information necessary to formulate a grand strategy.
I do like this book a little bit more than Klein's offering, if only for the fact that Ramaswamy is seemingly willing to take action and put his money where his mouth is. This book is practically a giant advertisement for Ramaswamy's investment company, Strive, a competitor to Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street... Or at least that's the idea. Whether or not his business works is another thing entirely. I'm not mad about that. He got me to read the whole fucking book, and I came away thinking about this stuff in a new way. I personally have my retirement with Vanguard, but realistically, my accounts are less than a rounding error for them. Nevertheless, I will take a closer look at how the mutual funds that I've bought into are being invested.
So what is this book about? Well, in short it's about how terrible ESG is; as an investment strategy, as a rating system, and how it is being applied to the greater economic system. I don't disagree with Ramaswamy, Klaus Schwab is clearly a fucking Bond Villian, full-stop (no, I will not eat the bugs). But, here's the thing, it's extremely easy to demonize what's already going on, and it's easy to criticize efforts of some to try and shift the paradigm in a direction they think will save the planet, save the species, etc. There are really only three different perspectives to the matter; either you think "it's all a sham," "it's all intentionally opaque," or "the kool-aid tastes great."
If it's all a sham, and financial titans are playing us for fools with a shell game, or three-card monty, then maybe we deserve it for not waking up to the con sooner, or coming up with a better solution. On the other hand, it could be intentionally opaque and therefore is actually a really smart way to deal with money, because most of us are pretty stupid and the average person doesn't have the mental space to think about how the economy works. Lastly, maybe you are a smart individual and you can see the benefits of trying to build a system around different principals other than the ones we currently use. I honestly don't think it's entirely just a re-branding of business as usual. However, what I don't particularly care for is the idea that ESG scores can be weaponized against businesses, rather than being a guide for the public at large to make a determination for themselves which businesses they want to support.
One of the big issues that Vivek points out is that the ratings boards aren't really independent organizations, but self-policing happens in a lot of industries. It should still be done in a more transparent manner and open to critique. I think the main concern is that the system is being perverted through an echo chamber. If the goals of ESG are noble ones, and it's not just a way to placate and control the masses, there will be room for people to invest in companies with poor ESG scores, and if ESG is really what the market wants, those will be the companies that survive into the next generation, ESG will therefore be a good indicator of a business’ worth. But we have to be involved, otherwise there’s no reason for anyone to listen to a different perspective. We’re all in this together as a species. Regardless of whether or not you think Climate Change and EDI are boogeymen invented by the elites, there’s nothing wrong with being concerned about the effect that we each have on the planet. Ted Turner had already thought of that, that’s why he started indoctrinating us as children with Captain Planet. I used to love that cartoon, and I do feel bad about littering.
Not everybody is going to be vegan, that’s a pipedream, maybe it’s about learning how to convert cow farts into something that isn’t warming up our planet, eh? There has to be some fucking middle ground. But I’m pushing for the capacity for every household to have two steaks per person at least two nights a week. Is the 3D printed meat going to win the awards? What about the company that is growing the meat from cultured cells? There’s definitely room in the market for people who want to eat 3D printed meat.
Ultimately, that was my takeaway. Even though Rawmaswamy complains about Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, and tries to call them on their bluff about the ESG stuff, he also is honestly advocating for a market system that lets ESG compete against whatever else might emerge as a ratings system. But this is what we do as humans, and that’s why game theory exists. We’re still a bunch of talking apes trying to out-compete each other in different and measurable ways. As the years go by and successive generations come and go, we’re refining the experience both as individuals and collectively.
May 22, 2023
In this book Vivek Ramaswamy educates the reader on how the Big Three investment firms - BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard - have influenced politics and policy through ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing. I learned so much and need to re-read the book to fully absorb and process the concepts. Ramaswamy has done a great job of simplifying the concepts for a layperson (such as myself) to understand. This is a must-read for all citizens.
July 1, 2023
We live in a very scary time. This should be read by all!
July 10, 2023
I have promoted Vivek from "Smart Guy" to "Genius".
November 14, 2025
Capitalist Punishment presents a thought-provoking, critical lens on how investment capital might be used to advance agendas beyond simple profit, the structural shift in asset-management power, and the implications for individual investors, corporations, and democracy. While its tone is polemical and some arguments invite further scrutiny, it is a valuable read if you want to challenge standard assumptions about finance, corporate purpose, and investor agency.
Chapter 1: ESG — Stakeholder Capitalism’s Trojan Horse
- ESG reframes corporate purpose: from shareholder profit to social goals.
- WEF and institutional elites promote ESG to embed political ideology into capital markets.
Chapter 2: Fiduciary Duty Betrayed
- Trustees and fund managers are legally bound to act solely in beneficiaries’ financial interest.
- Implementing ESG mandates without explicit investor consent violates this trust law principle.
Chapter 3: ESG’s False Promise
- Claims of superior ESG returns are overstated.
- Any outperformance correlates with tech sector overexposure, not ESG strategy.
- ESG bubbles may collapse once hype fades.
Chapter 4: Passive Investing Power Grab
- Passive index funds centralize corporate voting power.
- The Big Three control vast ownership across public markets.
- Individual investors lose voting rights and corporate influence.
Chapter 5: Conflicts of Interest in ESG
- ESG ratings and consulting firms profit from their own standards.
- Higher fees charged for ESG funds; inconsistent methodologies.
- Double standards: strict in the U.S., lenient abroad.
Chapter 6: Antitrust and Cartel Behavior
- Shared ownership across competitors leads to horizontal shareholding.
- Coordination on ESG targets functions as a cartel (e.g., Climate Action 100+).
- May suppress competition and distort markets.
Chapter 7: Government Overreach
- Regulators and pension funds push ESG goals, politicizing investment policy.
- Raises constitutional concerns over compelled speech and association.
Chapter 8: ESG’s Negative Externalities
- Unintended consequences: energy insecurity, offshoring pollution to less‑regulated countries.
- Erodes trust in institutions and economic efficiency.
Chapter 9: Solutions
- Investor transparency: disclose ESG policies and voting behavior.
- Investor choice: allow opt‑outs from ESG funds.
- Encourage market competition for non‑ESG asset managers.
- Legal accountability: enforce fiduciary and antitrust law.
Rating: 4/5
Chapter 1: ESG — Stakeholder Capitalism’s Trojan Horse
- ESG reframes corporate purpose: from shareholder profit to social goals.
- WEF and institutional elites promote ESG to embed political ideology into capital markets.
Chapter 2: Fiduciary Duty Betrayed
- Trustees and fund managers are legally bound to act solely in beneficiaries’ financial interest.
- Implementing ESG mandates without explicit investor consent violates this trust law principle.
Chapter 3: ESG’s False Promise
- Claims of superior ESG returns are overstated.
- Any outperformance correlates with tech sector overexposure, not ESG strategy.
- ESG bubbles may collapse once hype fades.
Chapter 4: Passive Investing Power Grab
- Passive index funds centralize corporate voting power.
- The Big Three control vast ownership across public markets.
- Individual investors lose voting rights and corporate influence.
Chapter 5: Conflicts of Interest in ESG
- ESG ratings and consulting firms profit from their own standards.
- Higher fees charged for ESG funds; inconsistent methodologies.
- Double standards: strict in the U.S., lenient abroad.
Chapter 6: Antitrust and Cartel Behavior
- Shared ownership across competitors leads to horizontal shareholding.
- Coordination on ESG targets functions as a cartel (e.g., Climate Action 100+).
- May suppress competition and distort markets.
Chapter 7: Government Overreach
- Regulators and pension funds push ESG goals, politicizing investment policy.
- Raises constitutional concerns over compelled speech and association.
Chapter 8: ESG’s Negative Externalities
- Unintended consequences: energy insecurity, offshoring pollution to less‑regulated countries.
- Erodes trust in institutions and economic efficiency.
Chapter 9: Solutions
- Investor transparency: disclose ESG policies and voting behavior.
- Investor choice: allow opt‑outs from ESG funds.
- Encourage market competition for non‑ESG asset managers.
- Legal accountability: enforce fiduciary and antitrust law.
Rating: 4/5
September 12, 2023
It's a really interesting topic, but the author isn't the most engaging of authors. This is the second book I have read by this author now in an attempt to get to know this man who is currently running for President in the US. The first book I was a bit ambivalent on because while it was filled with informative points I happened to agree with, I found the book difficult to read and I couldn't put my finger on why. With this book being the same way, I think I've figured out the problem... this man is not a writer.
To be fair the book is well-researched, it is informative, and it's worth reading. The problem is that the book is really dry and the author hasn't done all that good a job at engaging me as a reader. This is in stark contrast to what I have seen from the man on podcasts and TV, and I think that this is because in those situations he has a live audience to work with. When it comes to his writing, it just seems to be missing the personality and life that would make it more easy to read and more engaging.
To be fair the book is well-researched, it is informative, and it's worth reading. The problem is that the book is really dry and the author hasn't done all that good a job at engaging me as a reader. This is in stark contrast to what I have seen from the man on podcasts and TV, and I think that this is because in those situations he has a live audience to work with. When it comes to his writing, it just seems to be missing the personality and life that would make it more easy to read and more engaging.
May 25, 2024
This is a bit of a difficult book to review. I consider myself a pretty well informed individual, but this is my second book from Ramaswamy and it is apparent that I don’t know much, after all. I took a star because I think he wrote this with a presupposition that the reader knows a bit more about the financial sector than I do. For that reason, it was a little difficult to follow at certain points, but the information here is highly illuminating. Vivek is extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about a variety of issues and would be an excellent fit for virtually any leadership position he seeks. I am looking forward to digesting another one of his works, but need a but of a break, as I am on information overload at this time.
I would absolutely recommend this, in spite of the fact that it’s a bit of a slog in some areas.
I would absolutely recommend this, in spite of the fact that it’s a bit of a slog in some areas.
November 21, 2024
Great book. Essential to understand ESG and DEI
Notes:
About ESG. Insist because I believe it is the biggest a scandal and it is very dangerous for our society.
Big corporations use ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) to push their policies onto:
• Multinational companies
• Neoliberal governments
Economically: They defund traditional energy production, driving up costs, while heavily investing in the green transition, which delivers them higher returns.
Socially: ESG pressures company boards and governments to implement inclusion and affirmative action policies, with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as a key mechanism.
How do they enforce this? By controlling the major ESG rating agencies. AND Access to funding depends on compliance with ESG standards.
It’s absurd because our governments should be in charge of the economic and social policies not the big finance
Notes:
About ESG. Insist because I believe it is the biggest a scandal and it is very dangerous for our society.
Big corporations use ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) to push their policies onto:
• Multinational companies
• Neoliberal governments
Economically: They defund traditional energy production, driving up costs, while heavily investing in the green transition, which delivers them higher returns.
Socially: ESG pressures company boards and governments to implement inclusion and affirmative action policies, with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as a key mechanism.
How do they enforce this? By controlling the major ESG rating agencies. AND Access to funding depends on compliance with ESG standards.
It’s absurd because our governments should be in charge of the economic and social policies not the big finance
October 1, 2024
I found this better than Woke, Inc. which I still haven't finished. I believe Mr. Ramaswamy is bringing important issues to the forefront, and he has the expertise to understand those issues. Unfortunately, his writing skills make some parts of his books a slog to get through.
In a nutshell: investment firms should be held accountable for pursuing goals other than maximizing shareholder wealth. The author believes this should happen through enforcement of current laws, some needed legislation, and active participation by individual investors.
He also has started a company to counteract the problems he lays out. This book is good marketing if his target audience can stay with the writing.
In a nutshell: investment firms should be held accountable for pursuing goals other than maximizing shareholder wealth. The author believes this should happen through enforcement of current laws, some needed legislation, and active participation by individual investors.
He also has started a company to counteract the problems he lays out. This book is good marketing if his target audience can stay with the writing.
February 3, 2025
BlackRock tied up American companies in ESG tape so the companies couldn’t invest in the oil or gas that they normal would. That part we know BUT then BlackRock majorly invested in Chinese companies to come and buy those same investments at a lower price!?!?!? How is there not a criminal investigation into this? I swear it can’t be legal. It’s on record. This is legit. They’re purposefully weakening America to strengthen China. Who is our enemy. Who sells the organs of living political prisoners. Wow. I need to look up the legal definition of treason.
I don’t know enough about finance to know whether Vivek was spot on about everything but he supported his points well. And you can access some of the info online when you fact check.
I don’t know enough about finance to know whether Vivek was spot on about everything but he supported his points well. And you can access some of the info online when you fact check.
November 16, 2023
This guy sure knows how to tell it like it really is, and what a breath of fresh air that is.
He goes after all the titans of industry, and to put that into perspective, those he targets make up a large portion of the world's wealth.
He doesn't take sides, and beats on anyone and everyone who deserves to be beat, and points out all the hypocrisies of the powers that be.
He bashes BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, those morons in the World Economic Forum, democrats, republicans, Sam Bankman-Fried, unions, fake environmentalists, China, Russia, and insert crook here... he destroys them all.
This book is a must read!
He goes after all the titans of industry, and to put that into perspective, those he targets make up a large portion of the world's wealth.
He doesn't take sides, and beats on anyone and everyone who deserves to be beat, and points out all the hypocrisies of the powers that be.
He bashes BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, those morons in the World Economic Forum, democrats, republicans, Sam Bankman-Fried, unions, fake environmentalists, China, Russia, and insert crook here... he destroys them all.
This book is a must read!
September 25, 2023
From the title, I thought this was going to be a socialist critique of capitalism when I downloaded it months ago before I heard of Vivek Ramaswamy, a current Republican presidential candidate. Instead, it talks about how investment capital is being used to push agendas onto companies without the consent of the individual investors.
The book didn't really convince me that stakeholder capitalism is bad in any way, though it has convinced me that capital has become WAY too consolidated in the Big Three index funds.
The book didn't really convince me that stakeholder capitalism is bad in any way, though it has convinced me that capital has become WAY too consolidated in the Big Three index funds.
December 13, 2024
ESG is a scam according to the author.
It leads to decreased return because it does not allow for investment in the most profitable companies And investors should earn the full return. Social missions should be performed by NGOs or the government. (Or Mark Cuban’s American Public Benefit Corporation which allows social missions and not only maximum profit)
BlackRock invest in both US and China. If America doesn’t drill, China will. So BlackRock earns anyway while maintaining their good image.
BlackRock applies ESG principles to all its funds not giving investors a choice. That is fraud.
It leads to decreased return because it does not allow for investment in the most profitable companies And investors should earn the full return. Social missions should be performed by NGOs or the government. (Or Mark Cuban’s American Public Benefit Corporation which allows social missions and not only maximum profit)
BlackRock invest in both US and China. If America doesn’t drill, China will. So BlackRock earns anyway while maintaining their good image.
BlackRock applies ESG principles to all its funds not giving investors a choice. That is fraud.
November 3, 2023
I liked this book even better than his last, because it was even more succinct and clear. He explained what Blackrock and other investment firms are doing in the name of wokeness and how we can legally combat their use of our retirement funds to encourage terrible, anti-capitalist initiatives that we don't agree with. It's a very clever book.
December 21, 2023
3.75 stars rounded up to 4. I felt like there was a lot of good information. Glad I read it in 2023.
February 25, 2024
A discussion about how investment firms are using investors’ money to promote the ESG agenda at the expense of maximizing profits for the investors.
November 21, 2024
I am not a fan of Vivek but this book was better than his others. Black rock seems to be laundering money everywhere.
January 13, 2025
This is a must read for anyone who wants to focus on their investment dollars. The best person to manage your money is you instead of Wall Street putting your money at risk.
June 9, 2025
This book really explains the whole corporate movement in DEI and issues that are NONE of their business has moved to the left!
I certainly don’t want my $$$$ going for this purpose!!
I certainly don’t want my $$$$ going for this purpose!!
January 3, 2025
Im voting Vivek to be president of the US in 2028 and 2032.
He is an idealist, with the youth of a JFK not seen since the 60's. Also I'm half Indian. I'm proud to vote for someone that has an Indian heritage. I think a Vivek / JD Vance ticket would be stellar. We would have an Indian 1st and second lady.
However this would not be a DEI vote, Bernstein I would never vote for the Indians Nikki Haley or Kamala Harris in a million years.
I like Vivek because he is an entrepreneur who started a business, achieved the American dream and made a billion dollars by his 30's. He spoke:
"I'm not in this business of writing books to make money for myself."
All the money that is made from this book will be donated to a nonprofit called "Color Us United" which Vivek says, "stands for this idea of reviving merit and the idea that you ought not be judged by the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and contributions."
Vivek mentions the 3 largest financial institutions, worth over $20 trillion:
1) BlackRock,
2)State Street and
3)Vanguard.
They usurp money from everyday citizens across this country. They are the biggest producers of gas and oil in the world.
Exxon, from the Rockefelker, that was broken up by the primary goal is not about making money but is about a political agenda called ESG [Environmental, social, and governance], which many Americans, such as myself, don't agree with, and quite frankly does not serve many Americans financial interests.
Vivek mentions Dr Seuss, green eggs and ham,
"I do not want to be a young global leader.
I would not like it with billionaires. I would not like it with
Buenos Aires. I would not like it anywhere."
The mantra that Vivek learned in law school is that property is a bundle of sticks or a collection of rights.
I also learned about the forced labor of Nike, who allows sweat shops, child labor, overpriced shoes and because they pay money 💲 to ESG (environment, social & governance) on top of it they are given illegal kickbacks.. they just circle/ check the right ✅️ box scores to get away with high ESG scores.
So after trading this book, I kind of made a little boycott against Nike. Besides why not by shoes from a little guy?
He is an idealist, with the youth of a JFK not seen since the 60's. Also I'm half Indian. I'm proud to vote for someone that has an Indian heritage. I think a Vivek / JD Vance ticket would be stellar. We would have an Indian 1st and second lady.
However this would not be a DEI vote, Bernstein I would never vote for the Indians Nikki Haley or Kamala Harris in a million years.
I like Vivek because he is an entrepreneur who started a business, achieved the American dream and made a billion dollars by his 30's. He spoke:
"I'm not in this business of writing books to make money for myself."
All the money that is made from this book will be donated to a nonprofit called "Color Us United" which Vivek says, "stands for this idea of reviving merit and the idea that you ought not be judged by the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and contributions."
Vivek mentions the 3 largest financial institutions, worth over $20 trillion:
1) BlackRock,
2)State Street and
3)Vanguard.
They usurp money from everyday citizens across this country. They are the biggest producers of gas and oil in the world.
Exxon, from the Rockefelker, that was broken up by the primary goal is not about making money but is about a political agenda called ESG [Environmental, social, and governance], which many Americans, such as myself, don't agree with, and quite frankly does not serve many Americans financial interests.
Vivek mentions Dr Seuss, green eggs and ham,
"I do not want to be a young global leader.
I would not like it with billionaires. I would not like it with
Buenos Aires. I would not like it anywhere."
The mantra that Vivek learned in law school is that property is a bundle of sticks or a collection of rights.
I also learned about the forced labor of Nike, who allows sweat shops, child labor, overpriced shoes and because they pay money 💲 to ESG (environment, social & governance) on top of it they are given illegal kickbacks.. they just circle/ check the right ✅️ box scores to get away with high ESG scores.
So after trading this book, I kind of made a little boycott against Nike. Besides why not by shoes from a little guy?
October 21, 2023
With Vivek running for President, I wanted to read his book. Every candidate has a book. His coin to fame as I see him interviewed is how our world has been changed by the ESG crowd and The New World Order.
Much of what he describes has been spoken bout by Janet and I. I do agree with him on many points. But I do not see him as a President.
But his points, are interesting.
He speaks of the big three. Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street and how they have taken over the world, taken over the corporate boardrooms and are themselves forcing this ESG compliance and everything that comes with it. The climate change agenda is also forced..
Major issues are… the big three and their power. It should be constrained. The crazy zealots of climate change and how they are actually damaging the world.
The discussion on Russia and Ukraine was interesting and I had already had these same thoughts. The zealots of climate changed brought Europe and the USA to depend on Russian energy so they could look green. This dependency raised or more then doubled to price of energy. No government cared. This rising income to Putin, gave him the money to invade Ukraine, in a situation where Europe and the USA agreed with this financial benefit to Putin. With this need for energy, Europe has been very timid to stop Russia.
The climate change religion has changed the world
The ESG religion has changed the world
Good luck, common sense is gone.
So, I agree with much of what Vivek says, but I do not think he should be President right now.
Much of what he describes has been spoken bout by Janet and I. I do agree with him on many points. But I do not see him as a President.
But his points, are interesting.
He speaks of the big three. Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street and how they have taken over the world, taken over the corporate boardrooms and are themselves forcing this ESG compliance and everything that comes with it. The climate change agenda is also forced..
Major issues are… the big three and their power. It should be constrained. The crazy zealots of climate change and how they are actually damaging the world.
The discussion on Russia and Ukraine was interesting and I had already had these same thoughts. The zealots of climate changed brought Europe and the USA to depend on Russian energy so they could look green. This dependency raised or more then doubled to price of energy. No government cared. This rising income to Putin, gave him the money to invade Ukraine, in a situation where Europe and the USA agreed with this financial benefit to Putin. With this need for energy, Europe has been very timid to stop Russia.
The climate change religion has changed the world
The ESG religion has changed the world
Good luck, common sense is gone.
So, I agree with much of what Vivek says, but I do not think he should be President right now.
October 3, 2023
An Important Treatise
Vivek does a deep dive into the politically correct forces driving the ESG movement. On the face of it, the idea that corporations should act as responsible citizens is obvious. Unfortunately, this has morphed into a philosophy to advance a particular radical agenda. It's not an easy read but it's worth your time. It's just one of the reasons Vivek has my support.
Vivek does a deep dive into the politically correct forces driving the ESG movement. On the face of it, the idea that corporations should act as responsible citizens is obvious. Unfortunately, this has morphed into a philosophy to advance a particular radical agenda. It's not an easy read but it's worth your time. It's just one of the reasons Vivek has my support.
October 3, 2023
Round up to 4.5 stars. Although I know little to nothing about Wall Street, the stock market, or mutual funds, Ramaswamy explains the current situation in comprehensible terms. The power of "The Big Three," BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, who Ramaswamy claim "not only own Big Oil, they own the banks," is daunting and leaves me in despair.
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