CHANGE: BlackRock Gets Downgraded for the Increasing Political Risk of ESG Investing. “Larry Fink is having a bad year. Some estimates place investments withdrawn from BlackRock, the firm where he is CEO, at nearly $3 billion just from states pulling treasury funds due to Fink’s public political agenda. In the second quarter of 2022, BlackRock exceeded average market losses, with assets under management falling 22% to $8.5 trillion. Third-quarter assets under management fell another 15%, with adjusted earnings down 12.8% and revenue falling 15%.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 19, 2022
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION): Putin’s War Escalation Is Hastening Demographic Crash for Russia.
Besides casualties in the thousands on the battlefield, the enlistment of 300,000 reservists to join the fight — and an even bigger flight of men abroad — is derailing Putin’s goals of starting to stabilize the population already this year.
Crippling disruptions from the war are converging with a population crisis rooted in the 1990s, a period of economic hardship after the Soviet breakup that sent fertility rates plunging. Independent demographer Alexei Raksha is calling it “a perfect storm.”
Plans by Putin’s government had set the goal of starting to reverse the decline in the population in 2022 before growth should resume in 2030. Yet weeks before the mobilization was announced in September, an internal report drafted for a closed-door meeting showed officials were already concluding those targets were unrealistic.
Citing the consequences of the coronavirus and migration outflows, the report instead proposed a revision that envisaged a decrease of 416,700 people in 2030.
Putin seems to have thought that he could quickly add 40 million ethnic Slavs to his empire, but things haven’t quite worked out that way.
IT ISN’T EVEN CLOSE. ALSO, YOU’RE WELCOME: Which Age Group is Most Likely to Vote GOP in 2022? Gen-Xers, of Course!
October 18, 2022
WHISTLEBLOWER: FBI Has ‘Voluminous Evidence’ Against Biden and His Family.
START YOUR OWN SATELLITE INTERNET SERVICE, SWAMPY: David Frum: Seize Starlink from Elon Musk if he shuts down Ukraine’s access.
OF COURSE HE DID: Joe Biden KNEW of Hunter’s shady business dealings. “These documents also indicate that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in some of them.”
SEMICONDUCTORS: China Is F*****. “As Peter Zeihan notes, these sanctions screw not only China’s semiconductor industry, but every segment of the high tech assembly chain that depends on them.”
A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: There’s a Public School Child Sexual Abuse Epidemic No One Is Talking About.
WEIRD HOW THIS ISN’T GETTING MUCH PLAY IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Baby formula update: Still missing in action. “While it’s not drawing much attention, a significant percentage of families with infants are still unable to find the variety of formula their babies require on any given week. According to the Wall Street Journal, roughly one-third of such families are either being forced to go with a brand not suggested for their baby’s needs or they simply aren’t finding any without jumping through a lot of hoops.”
WE NEED A JAN20 COMMISSION: The Most Telling Chart on Inflation You’ve Ever Seen.
UNDERCOVER VIDEO BACKFIRE: Conservatives Go Crazy for GOP Congressman’s Call to Break Up the FBI. “The video apparently came from a group called The Undercurrent, a low-rent lefty ripoff of Project Veritas.”
DAVID HARSANYI: Fauci Can’t Whitewash His Disastrous Legacy.
Fauci now portrays himself as a humble public health official who had merely shared scientific advice and information with decision-makers. This self-serving depiction conveniently ignores his fearmongering, his coaxing and lying to manipulate behavior, and his partisan scheming. Governors regularly leaned on Fauci’s positions as justification for their unconstitutional shutdowns of churches, economic lockdowns, and school closures. And Fauci praised them for it. Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden urged governors to “listen to Dr. Fauci” for their guidelines. Most already had. When Biden won the presidency, Fauci blamed the alleged underperformance of the United States under Donald Trump on the “disparate responses of different states versus the unified approach.”
The unified approach, of course, was the Fauci approach.
If the spiritual leader of the “follow the science” knew, as he now claims, that “draconian” Covid policies would lead to “collateral negative consequences,” why didn’t he mention this fact back then? And why did he portray those who did as politically motivated and anti-science?
His entire office needs to be zeroed out by the next Congress to prevent the next little dictator.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems’ Daddy Issues J6 Charade Isn’t Winning Hearts and Minds. “The dream was that the focus on J6 would distract from the fact that a loaf of bread now costs $475 and that the Oval Office is occupied by a guy who can’t string three coherent sentences together and is often seen shaking hands with phantoms.”
September: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve Is At Its Lowest Level Since 1984. “Over time the U.S. government began to fill the reserve. At its high point in 2010, the level reach 726.6 million barrels. Since December 1984, the level has never been lower than 450 million barrels — until now.”
Flashback: Remember When Democrats Blocked Trump from Filling the Strategic Oil Reserve While Gas Was Cheap?
Reserves are down by more than a third on Biden’s watch even before this new release.
DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats’ Disconnect With Voters Is a Gaping Chasm With Only Three Weeks Left. “Not even a majority of Democrats agreed when CAPS-Harris asked them specifically if the economy was on the right track.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (COMMUNIST CHINA EDITION): China May Be ‘Uninvestable’ After All.
This is not the first time analysts have issued dire warnings against investing in Chinese stocks. From our standpoint as advocates of long-term investing, we too share the view that what qualifies as a high-quality investment, necessarily requires some level of visibility into future cash flows or prospects of the asset in question. When it comes to investing in China, though, the future is wildly unpredictable given the lack of transparency, weak accounting standards, and poor regulatory oversight. Worse, the fate of the Chinese economy is almost entirely dependent on the political aspirations of a single man, Chinese President Xi Jinping.
And Xi Jinping’s actions of late have been nothing short of disturbing for investors. Even former Morgan Stanley Chief Economist and long-time optimist of China, Stephen Roach, has recently issued warnings that China’s actions are signaling the early stages of a cold war.
Xi’s gotta have it — or whatever is left of it.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Are Democrats Trying to Steal the Election in Pennsylvania? “Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman issued guidance last week directing local officials to count those illegal ballots anyway.”
Kevin Downey Jr: Congressional Candidate Makes Virtue-Signaling Adult Videos to No One’s Delight. “Mike Itkis, a far-left New York City commie hoping to replace the current pinko, Jerry Nadler, in Congress, is so sex-positive that merely talking about it isn’t enough.”
Yours Truly: A Crimean Bridge Too Far. “In the meantime, Russia does have a couple of options for keeping their Kherson forces fed and armed — neither of them as good as having full use of that bridge.”
October 17, 2022
EXPLAINER: Why Nothing in Westeros Ever Changes (Besides the Size of the Dragons). “To understand why so little has changed in Westeros, one need only look to our own world. Though many of us have personally witnessed massive change and innovation in our own lifetime, this was the exception, not the rule, in history.”
SHE ONLY WANTED TO DEFUND YOUR POLICE, NOT HER POLICE: Seattle City Council Woman Wants Police Protection After Feces Thrown at Her Condo.
CHANGE: When Harry became Sally: Parents have a right to know. “The key issue is'”whether schools can socially transition students identifying as transgender while concealing it, or related counseling, from parents,’ Rotherham writes. The old guidelines under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, let teachers decide. The new guidelines, under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin say parents must be informed.”