Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Wait inside from the reporters and
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Speaker 1: global business finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Right now, though, let's get to a store.
Speaker 3: In the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg Business Week, It's
Speaker 3: out on newsstands tomorrow, it's right now online and on
Speaker 3: the Bloomberg terminal. The story notes that in the US,
Speaker 3: the most elusive piece of any new energy project isn't material.
Speaker 3: We're not talking about things like copper, steel, labor, or
Speaker 3: even capital. It is actually something as simple as a permit.
Speaker 3: Turns out, getting permits and getting these projects through not
Speaker 3: so simple.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it.
Speaker 3: Joining us to talk about what's going on. As Bloomberg
Speaker 3: News Energy reporter Josh Saul one of the reporters on
Speaker 3: the story. He's on zoom in New York City along
Speaker 3: with the Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber in our
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio back in New York City. Joel,
Speaker 3: I had no idea, as you guys lay out in
Speaker 3: this story, how long it takes you.
Speaker 4: You had no idea.
Speaker 5: I had no idea.
Speaker 4: There's a I have a funny joke in my house
Speaker 4: where my son will like, build a fort and I'll
Speaker 4: be like, you got a permit for that? And that
Speaker 4: helps me, like, you know, put a damper on the
Speaker 4: on the Ford building. Turns out the US also really
Speaker 4: good at putting a damper on big, ambitious US energy
Speaker 4: product projects. And what was even more surprising, perhaps from
Speaker 4: Josh on this story and company on this story, is
Speaker 4: that it's created some unlikely allies.
Speaker 5: What's going on, Josh, That's a.
Speaker 6: Good dad joke, Joel, I'm gonna start using that. So
Speaker 6: what's happened here is that the permitting system in the
Speaker 6: US is so is so old and so complicated that
Speaker 6: to build, for example, a transmission line that's going to
Speaker 6: carry clean power across the US, to build a new
Speaker 6: gas pipeline, to build a new solar farm that's going
Speaker 6: to create that kind of clean ener electricity that we want,
Speaker 6: can take can take years, can take ten years. Some
Speaker 6: of the projects we've written about, it can take seventeen years,
Speaker 6: and there's still not steel in the ground. And what
Speaker 6: that does is it costs companies billions of dollars. You know,
Speaker 6: it slows down the energy transition and the fight against
Speaker 6: climate change that we're trying to get going with all
Speaker 6: the clean energy, just a really inefficient bureaucratic way that
Speaker 6: it's set up right now, and that's created some strange bedfellows,
Speaker 6: like you said, where you have oil companies and clean
Speaker 6: energy companies and Republicans and Democrats, you know, folks who
Speaker 6: usually do not shake hands, all getting together and saying, hey,
Speaker 6: we need to make this better.
Speaker 4: Not only Democrats and Republicans, but also within the energy world,
Speaker 4: right you've got renewables and phossipl fuel people. Everybody hates this.
Speaker 4: So what's that dialogue been like?
Speaker 7: It's I mean, it's hard to build anything.
Speaker 6: And that means that in a broad sense, you have
Speaker 6: a lot of different companies, a lot of different groups,
Speaker 6: a lot of different advocacy groups and lobbyists all saying
Speaker 6: this needs to be this needs to be streamlined, you know,
Speaker 6: instead of doing you know, two years to designate the
Speaker 6: corridor for a transmission line, and then four or five
Speaker 6: years for the environmental year environmental review, and then another
Speaker 6: two years for a different federal agency to get going
Speaker 6: and then another environmental review that can take four or
Speaker 6: five years. Those are real timelines. I'm not making that
Speaker 6: up as ludacrous as it sounds. They're saying, hey, maybe
Speaker 6: we can get this into a you know, one year,
Speaker 6: two year, one year type schedule.
Speaker 4: So there's a sign in this story that Bloomberg has
Speaker 4: covered before, but it was a reminder of just how
Speaker 4: hellish this can look. Like there's this five hundred mile
Speaker 4: long sun zea Southwest transmission projects. How bad can this
Speaker 4: permitting stuff get?
Speaker 6: Josh, it really bad that the sun Zeal Line, which
Speaker 6: is going to carry clean power, solar solar power from
Speaker 6: big solar fields in New Mexico to the Phoenix area.
Speaker 6: And that's important if you care about climate change, for
Speaker 6: the idea that will be displacing you know, natural gas
Speaker 6: fired plants in the Phoenix area with electrons created by
Speaker 6: the sun that will be flowing from New Mexico. But
Speaker 6: in order to do that, you have to build a
Speaker 6: power line to carry them, to carry them, to carry
Speaker 6: them those five hundred and twenty miles.
Speaker 7: That's really hard to do.
Speaker 6: So that process has been going on for seventeen years
Speaker 6: and it's actually it's not a one off. I wrote
Speaker 6: a story last year about a different power line which
Speaker 6: would carry electricity from the windy plains of Wyoming, really
Speaker 6: windy area to downward down towards Las Vegas, again displacing
Speaker 6: natural gas fired plants and other kinds of fossil fuels.
Speaker 6: And that's also been hung up for closer to two
Speaker 6: decades than one decade at this point, because it takes
Speaker 6: so long to get all of the federal permits, to
Speaker 6: get all the private permissions, to cross all of the
Speaker 6: different kind of land that a project like that would
Speaker 6: would go over.
Speaker 2: Hey, Josh, can we talk pizza?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 7: I love, thank you. I would want.
Speaker 6: As we got this far in the conversation, the one
Speaker 6: of the one of the energy analysts we spoke to
Speaker 6: had a fun had a fun analogy, and this gets
Speaker 6: to the idea that, yes.
Speaker 7: There are strange bedfellows. Both Republicans, Democrats.
Speaker 6: Oil, oil and gas, solar and wind folks all want
Speaker 6: to reform the system. But an energy analyst had a
Speaker 6: good point, which is that yet in a broad sense,
Speaker 6: everyone wants reform of the system. They all want hey, yeah,
Speaker 6: let's order pizza. But actually getting down to the specifics
Speaker 6: of well, what should the reform look like is as
Speaker 6: hard as when you have a room full of people
Speaker 6: and you're trying to decide whether you're gonna be murdering
Speaker 6: veggie pizzas, meat pizzas, anchoby pizzas.
Speaker 7: Pineapple Hawaiian. And the point there is that.
Speaker 6: You know, the oil folks want the oil folks want
Speaker 6: less federal oversight. The UH transmission folks want more federal
Speaker 6: oversight because they want the states overruled, because the states
Speaker 6: are sometimes the ones who you know, who put up
Speaker 6: roadblocks as two examples. And point is that it's easy
Speaker 6: to say, yeah, we want permitting reform, but it's a
Speaker 6: lot the same way it's easy to say, hey, let's
Speaker 6: order pizza, but it's a lot harder to drill down
Speaker 6: and say this is actually what it should look like
Speaker 6: when you have lots of different groups that want different things.
Speaker 6: And the analyst, the analyst we talked to kind of
Speaker 6: funny funny points. She said, the reform that we got
Speaker 6: in the debt ceiling bill that just passed, she said,
Speaker 6: it's just kind of little little, little, kind of some
Speaker 6: little changes. She's like, that's like cheese pizza. So it's like, sure,
Speaker 6: no one's gonna fight that one. But it's not like real, big,
Speaker 6: meaningful reform.
Speaker 4: You know, what's divisive is Hawaiian pizza. There's people that like,
Speaker 4: that is not pizza, Josh. It's like, you know, sacrilege
Speaker 4: that you would do that to pizza.
Speaker 7: Pizza is intense.
Speaker 6: And my wife is from here in New York City,
Speaker 6: I'm from I'm from Alaska. There's a pizza place up
Speaker 6: there that does you know they do the chicken tie,
Speaker 6: they do the euro pizza. She's like, I don't know
Speaker 6: what this is, but this is not pizza.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but cheese pizza. Everybody can get behind cheese pizza.
Speaker 4: It is a universal love language. But even the word reform,
Speaker 4: in permitting even the word that is a divisive word.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, my co my co writer, The Great Tender Louis
Speaker 6: was kind of as we were as we're going over
Speaker 6: the story, she was kind of like, you know, you like,
Speaker 6: maybe call it an overhaul, maybe call it you know,
Speaker 6: because reform is even that word is subjective, you know,
Speaker 6: with some groups saying well we're not reforming it, we're
Speaker 6: tweaking around the edges or we're overhauling. So yeah, you're
Speaker 6: you're right as we as we move forward and get
Speaker 6: into the real nitty gritty of how do we fix
Speaker 6: this system?
Speaker 7: How do we streamline the system?
Speaker 6: How do we make it so that this country can
Speaker 6: move forward and build all these things that people want.
Speaker 6: How do we do that in a way, in a
Speaker 6: way that works. That's really hard to do.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm just going to tell you, first of all,
Speaker 3: I'm starving right now, and I will go for any
Speaker 3: kind of pizza. But having said that, in your story,
Speaker 3: like you talk about, there are you know, the government
Speaker 3: has put requirements out there. We talk about net zero
Speaker 3: by twenty fifty, right, there's requirements on companies on the
Speaker 3: country to like move ahead get these projects done, especially
Speaker 3: when it comes to cleaner energy. So I mean the
Speaker 3: pressures on what are the changes that are likely to
Speaker 3: happen or you know, and that are being called for.
Speaker 6: Just I mean, the main point would be some of
Speaker 6: the main points that people talked about would be.
Speaker 7: Streamlining the environmental reviews.
Speaker 6: So instead of having you know, one federal agency doing
Speaker 6: a long federal a long environmental review on the front end,
Speaker 6: and then another agency starting another one at the back end,
Speaker 6: but just doing one uh, you know, one comprehensive environmental
Speaker 6: review and you know, so that'd be one to to
Speaker 6: lop off of a couple of years. Another issue that's
Speaker 6: come up is UH is UH you know, judicial review
Speaker 6: is the courts, which is that some of these projects
Speaker 6: they can get hung up in the courts, you know,
Speaker 6: because you have you have groups that will file lawsuits saying,
Speaker 6: you know, this this project goes too close to UH two,
Speaker 6: goes too close to these waterways, it violates sections of
Speaker 6: the of the Clean of the Clean Water Act, so
Speaker 6: it shouldn't be built for that reason. And then the
Speaker 6: whole project goes into the court, the developers tearing their
Speaker 6: hair out, you know, inflation's driving up the cost of
Speaker 6: the project.
Speaker 7: They're not making any money, their money is sitting around.
Speaker 6: And then it's you know, before a federal judge and
Speaker 6: they're talking about, you know, whether or not the gas
Speaker 6: pipeline or the transmission line is too close to some
Speaker 6: protected water with so another reform or overhaul, depending on
Speaker 6: how you want to call it. Another another tweak that
Speaker 6: some people would want to make would be to limit
Speaker 6: the power limit limit limit how how deep into the
Speaker 6: process the courts get. But overall, all of the reforms
Speaker 6: or fixes or overhauls would be about streamlining and making
Speaker 6: faster the process.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna have this inflation Reduction Act that comes
Speaker 4: into play. Here, is this gonna help or hurt or
Speaker 4: hurt everything?
Speaker 1: Josh?
Speaker 4: Because there's a lot of money that's going to be
Speaker 4: slashing around, right.
Speaker 6: So that's that's one of the points that came out
Speaker 6: that was important in our reporting is we kind of
Speaker 6: wanted to ask, well, so is would permit reform help
Speaker 6: clean and more?
Speaker 7: Or what it held fossil fuels more?
Speaker 6: You know, because we talked to some fossil groups and
Speaker 6: they're sort of saying, well, yeah, we want to build
Speaker 6: we want to build gas pipelines that we can export LNG.
Speaker 6: We want to you know, American liquefined natural gas, you know,
Speaker 6: export it all over all over the world. But we
Speaker 6: need to be able to build pipelines to get it
Speaker 6: to ports, and that's being held up by permitting. But really,
Speaker 6: what our reporting showed and the people we talked to
Speaker 6: is that the clean energy side of the LEDGER would
Speaker 6: end up getting much bigger boost from a from an
Speaker 6: over from an overall overall portap you know, fixed to
Speaker 6: the system.
Speaker 2: We gotta we got to jump in.
Speaker 3: It's a great story to the upcoming new issue of
Speaker 3: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, or thanks to Josh Saul and Jil Weber,
Speaker 3: this is Bloomberg.
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Speaker 2: I know we've got another guest from Insight. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: toss it over to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we do. Haley sax is here.
Speaker 8: She's the founder and chief executive officer of Finance is
Speaker 8: Cool And if you're a younger person, you may know
Speaker 8: her as missus dow Jones because she is an Instagram influencer.
Speaker 8: I guess, or is it TikTok or is it? Do
Speaker 8: you go across all the platforms.
Speaker 9: Matt, I am verse. I do any platform I like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
Speaker 9: If there are eyeballs, Missus dow Jones is there.
Speaker 8: And you have apparently a lot of eyeballs, right, I
Speaker 8: heard Carolyn. I told me like seven hundred thousand people
Speaker 8: follow you.
Speaker 5: Is that correct?
Speaker 9: Close to a million.
Speaker 8: Actually now all right, so yeah, but what do you
Speaker 8: do for these people? Like you don't pick stocks, right,
Speaker 8: You're not telling them to put all their money into
Speaker 8: government bonds.
Speaker 5: You're just trying to educate them financially.
Speaker 9: Well, we never learn about money math. So most people
Speaker 9: enter adults and we're given our first paychecks and we
Speaker 9: have no idea what to do with it. We make
Speaker 9: decisions completely on emotion or whim and we lack the
Speaker 9: actual insight to feel confident. So I am that ladder.
Speaker 9: I fill that gap. I create financial confidence in my
Speaker 9: audience by teaching them.
Speaker 5: But so what what do you teach them?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 5: Oh? Everything? So we go over you didn't you don't
Speaker 5: do you don't have.
Speaker 8: An MBA, or you don't have a CFA, or you
Speaker 8: didn't study finance yourself, did you.
Speaker 9: I never was in the financial system, and I think
Speaker 9: that is what allowed me to think outside the box
Speaker 9: and create something that has never been done before. So
Speaker 9: I use humor, I use pop culture, and it took
Speaker 9: off really quickly because there's nothing really else in the
Speaker 9: space like that.
Speaker 5: Carol. Let me bring you in from from Orlando.
Speaker 2: Haley. Hi, nice to be talking with you.
Speaker 3: I do feel like, it's interesting kind of a contrast
Speaker 3: based on some of the conversations we've had at that
Speaker 3: Matt has had over at Bloomberg Infestival, so that we're
Speaker 3: having it purging insight with a lot of the registered
Speaker 3: investment advisory world.
Speaker 2: But tell us about this space.
Speaker 3: What was it about your own experience and the questions
Speaker 3: that you had that have enabled you to kind of
Speaker 3: create your media world and help others. So talk to
Speaker 3: us a little bit about your own experience.
Speaker 9: My own experience is I never learned about money, and
Speaker 9: I entered the workforce completely. I had no confidence. I
Speaker 9: was so scared and I got my first job. I
Speaker 9: was working for Lorne Michaels, and they asked me if I.
Speaker 2: Wanted a four to one k.
Speaker 9: They were asking me about healthcare, and I nodded as
Speaker 9: though I understood what they were saying, hoping that they
Speaker 9: wouldn't fire me on the spot, and then quickly went
Speaker 9: home that night to try and learn. And I was
Speaker 9: put to sleep by what.
Speaker 2: Was out there.
Speaker 9: And look, I grew up watching you know, the Kardashians,
Speaker 9: and loving Beyonce and like these fun I love entertainment,
Speaker 9: and I didn't understand why in order to learn about money.
Speaker 9: It couldn't be lively, it couldn't be exciting, And so
Speaker 9: I started to teach myself and I posted my lessons
Speaker 9: that I was using to you know, just gain knowledge
Speaker 9: on my own time online and literally within weeks it
Speaker 9: took off. So it was very very fast.
Speaker 2: Well, so talk to us too.
Speaker 3: And Matt makes a good point because when you're dealing
Speaker 3: with people's money and it's an interesting week where there's
Speaker 3: you know, crypto is kind of under siege from the SEC,
Speaker 3: it's very easy for investors, you know, young or old,
Speaker 3: to be pulled into things that maybe could be questionable.
Speaker 3: I'm not necessarily saying that's the case of crypto, but
Speaker 3: I'm just saying in general, so what is it that
Speaker 3: you how you get.
Speaker 2: Your exactly right?
Speaker 3: So I'm just curious what you lean on in terms
Speaker 3: of getting your information to make sure that it's really
Speaker 3: sound and solid for the folks that pop on your website.
Speaker 9: Oh, I mean, my information comes from the top sources
Speaker 9: like we're using. Of course, we're using Bloomberg, We're using
Speaker 9: all the top publications. But I'm also not covering topical
Speaker 9: financial events unless they're relating to a bigger lesson, Like,
Speaker 9: I'm all about building long term wealth. I'm just trying
Speaker 9: to get people to invest the money in the roth
Speaker 9: IRA and you know, save twenty percent, make sure they
Speaker 9: have an emergency fund, avoid high interest rate debt. And
Speaker 9: if you want to take it further and start, you know,
Speaker 9: investing in individual stocks and things like that, that's great.
Speaker 9: But I would never preach that because how often do
Speaker 9: individual stocks outperform an index fund?
Speaker 8: Right, So it's not this is what I was trying
Speaker 8: to clarify. So you're not giving an investment advice. No, no, no,
Speaker 8: What you're trying to do is make people financially aware
Speaker 8: so that they can seek out their own investment advice.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I want exactly That's exactly it. Like I look,
Speaker 9: I give you the knowledge, it's up to you to
Speaker 9: take action. I'm never going to tell you to invest
Speaker 9: in something, but i am going to tell you that
Speaker 9: you need to invest.
Speaker 8: It's amazing that to me that you have a million followers,
Speaker 8: not because I don't think you can go get a
Speaker 8: million followers, but because of the idea that people care enough.
Speaker 5: No, no, that's not in all the case.
Speaker 8: I'm just thinking if my kind of the stereotype in
Speaker 8: my head is that someone who goes on Twitter or
Speaker 8: spends a lot of time on Instagram wants to see
Speaker 8: the Kardashians and Beyonce and does not want to hear
Speaker 8: the word four oh one k.
Speaker 5: Right, So that's what I think is really interesting.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, I'm sitting right in front of you. You
Speaker 9: don't think that I'm giving Beyonce and Kardashian like that's
Speaker 9: sart of my charm. I know, I am like glamorous
Speaker 9: and fun, but I'm also really smart about money, and
Speaker 9: I want you to be too.
Speaker 8: I just think, you know, you're so right that kids
Speaker 8: aren't taught about this. Yeah, and a lot of people,
Speaker 8: even who work at Bloomberg. For years, I didn't invest
Speaker 8: in my forem okay, even though I worked here. It
Speaker 8: took Carol telling me to do it, you know, ten
Speaker 8: years into my career for me to like figure out
Speaker 8: how to do that.
Speaker 5: So what do you hear about financial education?
Speaker 8: What do you hear about because there's just a lack
Speaker 8: of it and we need to change that.
Speaker 9: Right, I mean truly, whenever I'm you know, doing events,
Speaker 9: I will have the audience raise their hands.
Speaker 2: Who here has you know?
Speaker 9: Was taught about money, and maybe one or two hands
Speaker 9: will go up. It is true, it's an epidemic. No
Speaker 9: one understands their finances and it's something that we deal
Speaker 9: with every day, and it becomes this really emotional thing.
Speaker 2: It's not that the it's.
Speaker 9: Not that the meat and potatoes is hard. It's not
Speaker 9: that creating a budget is hard. It's not that I
Speaker 9: investing your fo O and K is hard. But especially women,
Speaker 9: we have so much shame around it. But why would
Speaker 9: we have shame around something that we were never taught?
Speaker 9: Like do you have do you have shame about not
Speaker 9: understanding Italian?
Speaker 5: You know, and I don't understand exactly.
Speaker 9: I guess I could tell you didn't speak Italian.
Speaker 8: So yeah, talk to us about the women portion of it,
Speaker 8: because I know that you focus, I mean more specifically
Speaker 8: on girls and young women who I guess what they're
Speaker 8: they're maybe teachers, think they need homec rather than you know,
Speaker 8: financial economics.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, of course, finance is a very male
Speaker 9: dominated space and so can feel very intimidating. And women
Speaker 9: are in the past have really abdicated their financial power,
Speaker 9: and I'm all about having them take that financial power
Speaker 9: back because look, even if you are married, say to
Speaker 9: a man who is taking care of the finances. Statistics
Speaker 9: women outlive men. So even if you are okay, I
Speaker 9: don't have to deal with this. I've figured out a
Speaker 9: way out. Eventually you're going to have to. So let
Speaker 9: me give you the tools so that you know how.
Speaker 3: I have to say, I've been just playing around with
Speaker 3: your website and it's really entertaining, you know, in terms
Speaker 3: of how you pull on you know, pull on pop
Speaker 3: culture over the years to get people to look at
Speaker 3: things like their four oh one K or think about
Speaker 3: you know, don't waste your time on money instead, you know,
Speaker 3: think about growing well.
Speaker 2: So it's really entertaining and fascinating. Yeah, Matt, you should
Speaker 2: check it out.
Speaker 5: I will.
Speaker 8: I just I'll actually let my wife deal with the
Speaker 8: finances at my house.
Speaker 5: I love that. So I don't know if I'm.
Speaker 8: In the minority here, but you know, I think it's
Speaker 8: really important to get people to think about this stuff
Speaker 8: at the very beginning of their careers.
Speaker 5: Right. By the way, how have you done since Lauren.
Speaker 9: Since Lorden Michaels.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think I'm doing quite well.
Speaker 5: Did you immediately start investing in your four oh one K.
Speaker 9: Well, now I have my own business, so even better.
Speaker 9: I invested in myself and I built something that I own.
Speaker 9: All right, excellent, all right, Haley, better be investing your
Speaker 9: four O one K.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, no, now, I'm maxing it out all the time.
Speaker 8: Haley Sachs, the founder and chief executive of Finance is Cool.
Speaker 8: You can follow her cross social media platforms at missus
Speaker 8: dow Jones.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: Carol Masser along with Matt Miller. Matt back at Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Headquarters in New York City attending and featuring guests from
Speaker 3: Bloomberg invest All day. I've been here at BNY Mel
Speaker 3: and Pershing Insight featuring guests, and right now we have
Speaker 3: not only a guest, but a member of the Bloomberg
Speaker 3: family with us right now as Blueberg Intelligence Senior ESG
Speaker 3: analyst Shaheen Contractor. She was in a panel here at
Speaker 3: insight earlier today then versus now. The evolution is sustainable investing.
Speaker 3: Good to have you here with Matt and myself. Tell
Speaker 3: us about your panel, and we do wonder kind of
Speaker 3: where the sustainable space is because it's it's been going
Speaker 3: through a little bit of a reckoning.
Speaker 10: Sure, So the panel was, you know, really about that evolution,
Speaker 10: and we spoke about how it's gone from you know,
Speaker 10: ethical or value space more towards ESG integration. But the
Speaker 10: big question was what's ahead right and I think the
Speaker 10: conclusion there was it's really the thematic so you know,
Speaker 10: things like climate, things like gender. That's why people are
Speaker 10: looking to differentiate themselves. It also doesn't have the word yes,
Speaker 10: she in it, which now is a fun word.
Speaker 3: Are they really kind of taking it away?
Speaker 10: They're not not taking it away, but I just think,
Speaker 10: you know, if you say the word YSG, people tend
Speaker 10: to shy away, but if you say something like climate,
Speaker 10: they're a lot more okay with it.
Speaker 2: Why are they showing away because of ESG?
Speaker 10: Because of that, they don't understand what it means the
Speaker 10: first thing. And I think also we all have seen
Speaker 10: the political backlash. I mean, it's woke, it's not lie.
Speaker 10: It's that is it really all because of the political
Speaker 10: It's a bit of that, But also I think it's
Speaker 10: bringing up the challenges, which is people don't understand what
Speaker 10: ESG means. And we actually had a bowling question like
Speaker 10: what prevents your clients from doing ESG? And the second
Speaker 10: most I feel like it was. The second one was
Speaker 10: we don't understand the boundaries, which means that they don't
Speaker 10: understand what es SHE is and how to do it.
Speaker 3: What about I want to bring mad It's just a
Speaker 3: damage can do.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 8: This seems like this is what the hucksters do, right,
Speaker 8: They slap ESG on their funds and they greenwash everything,
Speaker 8: and then.
Speaker 5: The suckers go and buy it.
Speaker 8: That's why people don't like ESG, right, even before the
Speaker 8: concern about it being woke. You know, one ESG fund
Speaker 8: can shun fossil fuel and the other one can own
Speaker 8: Xon Mobile.
Speaker 5: I mean that's why nobody buys it.
Speaker 10: No, So I think the point is that es she
Speaker 10: just means so many different things to different people. I
Speaker 10: think that's the challenge that even you're saying, and you're
Speaker 10: talking about but ESG is really about just data, right,
Speaker 10: It's more data it's a three sixty degree view of
Speaker 10: a company rather than a one data degree view of
Speaker 10: just financial information and how people use it very so much,
Speaker 10: and I have to recognize that that's a challenge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that to me then doesn't sound like it
Speaker 3: deserves its own little vertical if you will, because if
Speaker 3: there's so many different parameters, I mean, isn't that part
Speaker 3: of the problem If you have ESG and you're comparing
Speaker 3: one fund to another fund, but yet it it has
Speaker 3: different missions?
Speaker 10: Not really, So I put the comparison to you know,
Speaker 10: people say, yes, she is not standardized, and yes, I agree,
Speaker 10: but you know, take and this is maybe I don't
Speaker 10: know how good this is its comparison, but take like
Speaker 10: a macrocano model, like show me ten microeconomic models that
Speaker 10: point to the same forecast to the economy.
Speaker 2: Right, So ESG.
Speaker 10: Can mean, you know, within certain boundaries, it can and
Speaker 10: should mean a couple of different things, and a fund
Speaker 10: or a score should give you transparency into what it
Speaker 10: means so that you can agree for yourself whether you
Speaker 10: agree with that. Does that make sense? Because I feel
Speaker 10: like ESG is too subjective, where if we keep talking
Speaker 10: about standardizing es she should or should not be Xon
Speaker 10: when going to keep arguing for decades. What it should
Speaker 10: be is, you know, we call it ESG. This is
Speaker 10: how we do it. This is the transparent approach. And
Speaker 10: I or Matt or you can choose to decide whether
Speaker 10: you agree with that.
Speaker 2: Matt, you get a thought on that.
Speaker 5: No, I gave all my thoughts already. You know, I.
Speaker 8: Think, listen, you're gonna invest. I can understand that some
Speaker 8: people will invest along the lines of their own values
Speaker 8: and think.
Speaker 5: I applaud that I would do. I do that too.
Speaker 8: I don't want to buy and support something that I
Speaker 8: don't feel is right. But the whole ESG fad that
Speaker 8: we saw, I think has died off because it means
Speaker 8: a different, completely different thing to different people. So there's
Speaker 8: no way that I can buy into, say like Deutsche
Speaker 8: Bank has an ESG fund. I'm gonna think it's good
Speaker 8: and Shaheen's gonna think it's bad, or I'll think it's
Speaker 8: bad and you'll think it's good.
Speaker 5: That's not a great way to label a product, you.
Speaker 8: Know, if if if you label something like that, it's
Speaker 8: just hard to sell to a large group of people.
Speaker 8: So that's why I think you've seen the backlash and
Speaker 8: then you have the whole woke political thing that you know,
Speaker 8: just adds adds on to it, the sort of uninvestigation.
Speaker 10: I get the Yeah, I get the challenges. I get
Speaker 10: the you know, the challenges with the tone. But I
Speaker 10: think at the end of the day, what it is
Speaker 10: is just it's looking at more data again, right Like
Speaker 10: if I if I put this acronym out, but if
Speaker 10: I ask you, you know, when you're choosing your partner,
Speaker 10: do you want more information or less information? You're gonna
Speaker 10: tell me more information.
Speaker 3: But does EESG mean anything? Like in talking with j
Speaker 3: Clayton earlier today, the former chair of the SEC, you know,
Speaker 3: he talks specifically about the governance. You know, he was
Speaker 3: brought into Apollo right part of the board, uh, non
Speaker 3: executive chairman. But you know when they were going through
Speaker 3: some of their issues like governance, we kind of get. Yes,
Speaker 3: it feels like I think environmental we should get. Although
Speaker 3: I think there's some some movement right. You know, do
Speaker 3: you buy into a major integrated oil company because they
Speaker 3: too are figuring out how to do it, you know,
Speaker 3: and provide either their processes that they currently do in
Speaker 3: a better way, or they are embracing renewables, So does
Speaker 3: that make them you know that they can be in
Speaker 3: that category? Social feels like, oh my god, you could
Speaker 3: go anywhere. So maybe like why do we need to
Speaker 3: have that category?
Speaker 10: So I think again, non financial data? Right, Like what
Speaker 10: is non financial data? I can almost term it as
Speaker 10: you know this ESG kind of lens. Yeah, So I
Speaker 10: think that's where it originated. Right, Whether it's a good
Speaker 10: term or not, I still think it is because it
Speaker 10: still encompasses the term non financial data, and one doesn't
Speaker 10: have to use you know, esn G. It's about what's material,
Speaker 10: Like you know, for a mining company, it's safety. Safety
Speaker 10: is a social topic. For cement, it's emissions. Emissions is
Speaker 10: an e topic. So it's about what's material.
Speaker 3: Financially material, I could, which is what it originally started out.
Speaker 3: And I feel like ESG went off in a whole
Speaker 3: different tangent. Yes, So that's part of the issue.
Speaker 10: Correct, So that's what I think it is today. So
Speaker 10: when I say more information, I just mean more information
Speaker 10: to make financially material.
Speaker 2: That's still not gonna buy it? It's okay. I can
Speaker 2: just feel right, Matt, are.
Speaker 5: You gonna buy in? I s.
Speaker 2: All right? We're gonna leave it there, of course.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Intelligence Senior est Alie seeing contractor here at Pershing
Speaker 3: Inside twenty twenty three.
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