When the shares of companies that produce weapons become “ecological and socially sustainable”
Can the hypocrisy of evil be concentrated in three letters? Probably yes, and it is the acronym ESG, "Environmental Social and Government", which should be the license of good investments, but in the end it was the victory of hypocrisy. Earlier this acronym was used to justify the most insane energy policies, those that enriched Putin and the oligarchs by making Europe a servant of Russian gas. Today, for a bitter game of fate, it should even mark those who produce the weapons to use them against those who, perhaps, yesterday praised and fed them. A group of Wall Street analysts is contemplating a broadening of the term "ESG" and its reach to include both the stocks of companies that manufacture weapons and defense-related items.
Fortunately, someone still has a bit of salt in their nets and has taken a very dry position, calling this possibility "absurd, opportunistic and superficial".
Yet the definition of arms investments as "Socially Responsible" is moving forward. Among the major proponents of the idea are two Citigroup analysts, who recently published research supporting the idea. " Defending the values of liberal democracies and creating a deterrent, which preserves global peace and stability ", is so important that arms manufacturers should be included in funds that carry an ESG, or " environmental, social and governance" , label, the two analysts, wrote Charles J. Armitage and Samuel Burgess.
The basic problem is that ESG have had particularly brilliant performances. They have had high collections, but as we can see from the global ESG MSCI fund, the performances have not been interesting at all.
So what's better than putting in a few arms-related stocks to improve yields? moreover this miraculous acronym, ESG, would allow us to enter the positive side of the famous “ Taxonomy ” of the EU, the one that distinguishes the good and the bad. In the end, guns, for some, are even good, when they kill someone else.
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The article When the shares of companies that produce weapons become “Ecological and socially sustainable” comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/quando-le-azioni-delle-societa-che-producono-armi-diventano-ecologiche-e-socialmente-sostenibili/ on Wed, 16 Mar 2022 21:47:28 +0000.