The ESG movement: The “goodness” gravy train rolls on!
By Aswath Damodaran, Musings on Markets
The ESG movement’s biggest disservice is the message that it has given those who are torn between morality and money, that they can have it all. Telling companies that being good will always make them more valuable, investors that they can add morality constraints to their investments and earn higher returns at the same time. The truth is that, most of the time, being good will cost you and/or inconvenience you (as businesses, investors or employees), and that you choose to be good, in spite of that concern.
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How to think about the unstoppable rise of index funds
The Economist
A market dominated by passive investors would indeed kick up concerns over whether capital is going to the right places. But domination is far from the case today. Active managers still play a big role in markets.
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Covid showed us what Keynes always knew
How the pandemic and events of the last decade upended economic policy
By The Ezra Klein Show (NYTimes podcast)
The central thread of Adam Tooze’s work is how the past decade of crises has upended many of the core assumptions that have guided economic policymaking for the past 50 years — including ones that many contemporary economists and policymakers continue to cling to.
