Ever wonder why companies don’t try to make money anymore?

It’s all about corporate debt and “stakeholder equity”

A company cannot be viewed as having a likelihood of defaulting on
It’s debt.  In order for that to happen, they have to be eligible for a bailout if things really do go badly.

So companies need to commit significant resources - just about all they have - toward being “worthy” of a bailout should the time come.  This entails malinvestments of time and effort such as DEI, Climate, etc. and generally being on the good side of the state and those who determine who gets bailed out.

You know who’ determines who gets bailed out?  Think Blackrock.

So all of these unproductive projects ate sucking resources, as a priority above making money.

Additionally, companies are at the gunpoint of the centralized voting proxies of asset managers like Vanguard, State Street, and Blackrock.  No company’s board wants to be ousted by these people.   

These people who have nothing to do with these companies - just custody the assets of their investors -  end up driving the fulcrum of governance at all of these companies to the end that they are no longer allocating resources to profitable projects in fear of upsetting these terrorists.

Companies are violating their fiduciary duty to their shareholders en masse and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.