Not everybody wants to save the world
Also: "More money, same old problems," and "Love's ugly sibling"
In this edition: (1) ESG labels in Europe. (2) A history of strange, reactionary divorce laws in America. (3) California mandates vaccines for school kids (with spacious exemptions). (4) FTC Chair Lina Khan learns that people don’t like change. (5) A study of China’s development financing program paint a sinister portrait.
Housekeeping: The Stringer publishes every other week. Send it to your friends, share the joy. See you in a couple of weeks.
Not everybody wants to save the world: Money managers in Europe have dumped the “ESG integrated” (environmental, social, governance) label like expired milk in the fear that regulators will crack down on usages of the term, according to Bloomberg. Europe’s “anti-greenwashing” rules, aka the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, prompted the spilled milk. The rules are seeking to toughen up to force money into actually sustainable businesses.
Love’s ugly sibling: I wrote for Investopedia about the history of divorce law and, relatedly, why there are so many outlandish laws on the books in America. Part of the story is centered on New Jersey’s Law Revision Commission which performs the vital (and mostly unpublicized) service of recommending old laws that should be stricken from the books.
State vaccine mandate (for kids): California, the US’ most populated state, has mandated coronavirus vaccines for school kids. Newsom had been the first to order closures as well, and the cliche is “where goes California, there goes other states.” The mandate, whose rules will be written after a period of public comment, is expected to include spacious exemptions: for religious belief, personal belief, and medical reasons, according to Associated Press. It also won’t take effect until the federal government has fully vetted the vaccine for the 12-15 and 5-11 ages, AP said—so not this year.
Choosing sides: Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, in her push to wrangle Big Tech under the power of a 21st century regulatory model meant to protect consumers, has ruffled a few feathers and has shown impressive backbone. She’s alarmed Republican lawmakers, executives from big corporations, and old members of the FTC, according to Politico. Khan is trying to return the FTC to a trust-busting institution, one that doesn’t operate on the assumption that the free-market will regulate away monopolistic tendencies on its own, which the article details.
More money, same problems: AidData, from my alma mater William & Mary, has released another report on China’s “Belt Road Initiative.” According to the latest report, over the last two decades China has increased its program to finance development abroad, spending about twice as much as the US and other big powers. But don’t think of it as aid; it’s loans. For those taking them that means debt. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has also been a larger push for “repayment safeguards” for risky debt. They’ve targeted resource rich countries with lots of corruption, the report says, in order to use future exports of those resources as collateral on the loans which have pretty high interest rates. Western powers have their own answer to the China’s initiative, Build Back Better World, which has its own numerous deficiencies. Industrialization, a byword for modernization in many countries, remains elusive. For the titillating details, see the report.
I write for various publications, occasionally linked in here. They have no oversight or advance knowledge of what goes in here.