Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks, one of the nation’s leading voices pushing back against the influence of corporate America’s progressive politics, on Saturday blasted a controversial investment move that critics accuse of “woke” political causes as part of “Satan’s plan.”
Oaks, speaking at the Republican Party Convention in Salt Lake County, told GOP delegates that ESG investing and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) had positive goals — such as helping the environment and fighting poverty — but were “results-based” in part. they were systems” designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion without any debate.
“The goals have been identified. It’s already been determined that these are the problems, and here are the solutions,” Oaks said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. “The debate is over.”
Oaks then called the biblical “war in heaven” from the book of Revelation, calling it another “results-based” initiative.
Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks (YouTube/Screenshot | Utah State Treasurer’s Office)
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“Results-based governance like the UN’s SDGs and ESGs opens the door to authoritarianism,” Oaks said. “It’s Satan’s plan.”
ESG, short for environmental, social and governance investing, suggests that investors should use these three broad categories when evaluating where to put their money, prioritizing progressive values and “social responsibility” when making financial decisions.
When asked for clarification on his remarks, an Oaks spokesperson told the Tribune that the issues raised by ESG are important and should be discussed.
“Treasurer Oaks said his use of the scriptural example was an attempt to speak to an audience that could understand and illustrate the problem with systems that try to get results for everyone,” the spokesman said. “His opposition is coercion as a mechanism in society.”
Oaks is one of many ESG experts and policymakers who have criticized it for seeking to achieve political goals by bypassing legislatures and the democratic process in order to impose them.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, attends the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York on February 8, 2017. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo)
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“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that can be passed through a legislative process,” Oaks said in an interview last year. “The Green New Deal failed to pass Congress, so its proponents shifted the battleground to the capital markets.”
ESG has become a politically explosive topic in the last couple of years.
The theory on which ESG is based is that corporations should downplay their traditional responsibility to maximize shareholder value and instead make new commitments to alternative stakeholders, to serve other interests and society at large.
Many investors now use ESG as a rating system to measure companies’ progress on policies designed to combat climate change, increase demographic diversity on corporate boards, and support a progressive “social justice” agenda, among other things.
“ESG” investing has become a new buzzword, and its influence extends from Wall Street to Washington, as the Senate voted to kill the Biden administration’s rule setting ESG standards for retirement funds. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
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However, critics of what they describe as a “corporate awakening” are mobilizing against the march by ESG advocates, who argue that the financial movement is a way of pushing left-wing causes through business rather than legislation.
Last April, Oaks coordinated an effort by political leaders across the state to send a letter to Douglas Peterson, president and CEO of S&P Global Ratings, demanding that S&P remove ESG indicators as a factor in the credit ratings of states and sub-states.
“ESG is about monitoring and enforcing behaviours,” Oaks said in a statement at the time. “It tries to do through the capital markets what activists and their government allies have been unable to do through the democratic process. S&P should be concerned about whether investors return, not whether state policy aligns with their political beliefs, whatever those may be. be”.
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A month later, Oaks raised about $100 million in state funds from investment giant BlackRock, one of America’s biggest proponents of ESG.
At the federal level, the Senate earlier this month passed a resolution that kills the Biden administration’s rule, which encourages managers to consider ESG factors when making investment decisions for the retirement funds of more than 150 million Americans.
Aaron Kliegman is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.