Even after Goldman Sachs’s exit, NZBA still boasts a membership of 145 banks in 44 countries, with assets of $73 trillion. Remaining in the alliance, at least for now, are US behemoths Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
The financial heft of the NZBA, and its commitment to invest only in projects that align with its net-zero greenhouse-gas-emissions agenda, has not gone unnoticed by industries fearing they will be blacklisted by the big banks. Of those, none has been more alarmed than U.S. agriculture.
This reverse flow has been going on for some time now. For example, from February of last year:
An ESG Asset Manager Exodus https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-action-100-exodus-j-p-morgan-state-street-blackrock-esg-investing-b78d2a06 Has the tide turned on environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing? It appears so. JPMorgan Asset Management, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors on Thursday retreated from the Climate Action 100+ investor compact because they don’t want the political and legal liability. Climate Action 100+ describes itself as the “largest ever global investor engagement initiative on climate change.”
“Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing,” Mr. Buckley said in a recent interview with the Financial Times.
Some states have said they won’t do business with ESG companies. In addition, a “climate cartel” leaves itself open to anti-trust liability which is probably a larger reason than not being able to sign contracts with the government of West Virginia.
Citigroup Inc and Bank of America (BofA) Corp said they’re leaving a global climate-banking group, becoming the latest Wall Street lenders to exit the coalition in the past month. .
The banks’ departure from NZBA follows Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Wells Fargo & Co. The largest US financial institutions are under increasing pressure from (banned word) lawmakers to distance themselves from industry groups that support reducing carbon emissions.
There are probably thousands of industry organizations. These industry organizations are a major source of “protected free speech” that buys policy from the government. One faction in the US, is targeting one industry organization, because it doesn’t like the thought behind the organization. Has the threat level to members of this organization increased in the last month? Is there an assessment that the retribution against them, for their “thought crime”, will escalate from a few states, to the federal level?
Well, what is the topic? I thought it was about pressure on private businesses to toe the official line, and not commit thought crimes? The OP says Goldman would not give an explicit reason for it’s exit. Why would that be? Are they afraid to publicly say they had been pressured by TPTB to toe the ideological line?
In a short statement, the Fed said it had “appreciated” working with the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. But it added that the organization “has increasingly broadened in scope, covering a wider range of issues that are outside of the Board’s statutory mandate.”