Debt Destruction
MUSICAL NOTE: Riding along in an automobile, in southern Michigan no less, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kate Bush come on the radio. I read a couple weeks ago the kids of America had sent her almost forty-year old song, “Running up the Hill (A Deal with God)” up the charts. Shoot, when the song was released you'd have a hard time hearing it on any American radio station – no internet then kids. 91X played it in San Diego, but that was out of Tijuana, so not sure that counts. We need to ask the bankers about extraterritoriality.
Well more Kate Bush has never been a bad thing, beautiful creature, who created plenty of very excellent Poptones.
The FT has an awfully amusing piece. If you've been following the financial press these last months, there's been a very active campaign to destroy something called ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), which was always a load of rubbish to begin with, Wall Street environmentalism etc..
Anyway there's been a lot of noise about ESG being the cause of higher energy prices, shortages, blah, blah. Read the piece, it contains comic jewels like this:
”On Nasdaq’s most recent earnings call, chief executive Adena Friedman trumpeted the success of the stock exchange’s efforts to make money out of the clamour for companies to be greener, fairer to workers, and more socially responsible.
“It’s definitely the highest-growth part of the business,” said Friedman, referring to the revenues Nasdaq makes in its ESG unit, which advises companies on their environmental, social and corporate governance policies while helping them meet disclosure requirements.
Wait for it,
But one of the biggest threats to Nasdaq’s ESG business comes from an unlikely source: Nasdaq.
The company is waging a battle to dilute the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s unprecedented climate change disclosure proposal, which would force companies to reveal their direct greenhouse gas emissions and have them verified by a third party. If enacted, the proposal would undoubtedly boost subscriptions to Nasdaq’s platforms Metrio and OneReport, which are intended to help companies measure and disclose ESG data. One of dozens of public companies to blast the SEC proposal, the stock exchange is worried the rules could hurt its core listings business. Nasdaq last year beat arch rival NYSE as the venue that landed the most initial public offerings.
Funny, funny stuff!
As the financial world shakes harder and harder, fear will grow. Remember kids, all established power is debt soaked today, and to do anything about the environment and a number of other things, a lot of that debt needs to be destroyed so we can free life up to healthily change. The voices of powerful interests who own and are reliant on debt will grow louder and louder saying the exact opposite.
They will cry, “Impossible! You all need to become more indebted to us,” — a doubling down on destruction.
In the American republic, in the third decade of the 21st century, just like the last decades of the Roman republic, if you're not talking about debt destruction, you're not a player.
Or as the lovely Ms Bush put it those years ago,
“If I only could, I'd make a deal with God
And get him to swap our places.”