Tensions burst out between Rep. Rashida Talib and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon last week at a Capitol Hill hearing over whether the U.S. financial sector should continue funding profitable new oil and gas projects. The) in financial decisions won’t soon fade. In fact, the stakes are about to heighten as political interest in central bank digital currencies grows.for the U.S.
So-called sustainable finance and its cousin Environmental, Social, Governance investment standards aim to shape corporate decisions towards an elite consensus on issues like environmental policy and the primacy of racial and gender diversity on corporate boards. Proponents already force shareholder votes on their preferred issues, but they want more.
A government with the power to record and monitor everyone’s transactions is powerful enough to impose its own version of morality on those transactions. Curtailing them, banning them, stopping them, erasing them, denying the ability for a company or individual to send or receive funds for disfavored people or causes. Once governments gain this control it will never be returned.