By Jack Mintz
Last week, I summed up 2023 as a year of poor economic performance, with high interest rates, declining real per capita GDP and shortages of housing and health care. Should we expect more of the same from 2024 or something better and brighter?
In the short term, the Trudeau government seems fixated on new redistributive programs such as denticare and pharmacare, rather than addressing the alarming decline in per capita GDP. Quite the contrary, its primary “growth” policy is to pursue a fast-paced energy transition regardless of the immediate GDP loss. Few plans are in place to improve private investment in innovation and investment, not unless you count extraordinarily reckless auto subsidies. And in Ottawa regulations grow like weeds, slowing the pace of development.
Many of the genuine elections could have a big impact on geopolitics and the world economy. Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Investment Management, argues that “The world is now completely dependent on the good sense of leaders to avoid an Armageddon.” Stock markets should be priced to reflect this political risk. Political developments could erode global trade and co-operation and aggravate hostilities in Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.
For Canada, the critical election takes place in the United States. But whoever wins the presidency in November (or later!), we’re likely to be hit by increasing U.S. protectionism. And if U.S. per capita GDP continues to rise faster than ours, as it did over the last decade, we will either find a new economic path or watch skilled workers and business investment literally go south on us.
With the winds of change blowing, Canada may see federal and provincial governments try a different approach to economic policy, one focused on economic growth rather than just redistribution. Both levels of government need to address our falling per capita GDP. If they do, Canadians will have something to cheer about by the end of 2024.
Not soon after the general election, and within two weeks of each other, two major financial institutions have left a United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).
This is after they joined three years ago, pledging to require environmental social governance standards (ESG) across their platforms, products and systems.
According to the “bank-led and UN-convened” NZBA, global banks joined the alliance, pledging to align their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, NZBA explains.
Since April 2021, 145 banks in 44 countries with more than $73 trillion in assets have joined NZBA, tripling membership in three years.
“In April 2021 when NZBA launched, no bank had set a science-based sectoral 2030 target for its financed emissions using 1.5°C scenarios,” it says. “Today, over half of NZBA banks have set such targets.”
There are two less on the list.
Goldman Sachs was the first to withdraw from the alliance this month, ESG Today reported. Wells Fargo was the second, announcing its departure Friday.
The banks withdrew two years after 19 state attorneys general launched an investigation into them and four other institutions, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, for alleged deceptive trade practices connected to ESG.
Four states led the investigation: Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri and Texas. Others involved include Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia. Five state investigations aren’t public for confidentiality reasons.
The investigation was the third launched by Texas AG Ken Paxton into deceptive trade practices connected to ESG, which he argues were designed to negatively impact the Texas oil and natural gas industry. The industry is the lifeblood of the Texas economy and major economic engine for the country and world, The Center Square has reported.
The Texas oil and natural gas industry accounts for nearly one-third of Texas’s GDP and funds more than 10% of the state’s budget.
It generates over 43% of the electricity in the U.S. and 51% in Texas, according to 2023 data from the Energy Information Administration.
It continues to break production records, emissions reduction records and job creation records, leading the nation in all three categories, The Center Square reported. Last year, the industry paid the largest amount in tax revenue in state history of more than $26.3 billion. This translated to $72 million a day to fund public schools, universities, roads, first responders and other services.
“The radical climate change movement has been waging an all-out war against American energy for years, and the last thing Americans need right now are corporate activists helping the left bankrupt our fossil fuel industry,” Paxton said in 2022 when launching Texas’ investigation. “If the largest banks in the world think they can get away with lying to consumers or taking any other illegal action designed to target a vital American industry like energy, they’re dead wrong. This investigation is just getting started, and we won’t stop until we get to the truth.”‘
Paxton praised Wells Fargo’s move to withdraw from “an anti-energy activist organization that requires its members to prioritize a radical climate agenda over consumer and investor interests.”
Under Texas law, financial institutions that boycott the oil and natural gas industry are prohibited from entering into contracts with state governmental entities. State law also requires state entities to divest from financial companies that boycott the oil and natural gas industry by implementing ESG policies. To date, 17 companies and 353 publicly traded investment funds are on Texas’ ESG divestment list.
After financial institutions withdraw from the NZBA, they are permitted to do business with Texas, Paxton said. He also urged other financial institutions to follow suit and “end ESG policies that are hostile to our critical oil and gas industries.”
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has expressed skepticism about companies claiming to withdraw from ESG commitments noting there is often doublespeak in their announcements, The Center Square reported.
Notably, when leaving the alliance, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said the company was still committed to the NZBA goals and has “the capabilities to achieve our goals and to support the sustainability objectives of our clients,” ESG Today reported. The company also said it was “very focused on the increasingly elevated sustainability standards and reporting requirements imposed by regulators around the world.”
“Goldman Sachs also confirmed that its goal to align its financing activities with net zero by 2050, and its interim sector-specific targets remained in place,” ESG Today reported.
Five Goldman Sachs funds are listed in Texas’ ESG divestment list.
The Comptroller’s office remains committed to “enforcing the laws of our state as passed by the Texas Legislature,” Hegar said. “Texas tax dollars should not be invested in a manner that undermines our state’s economy or threatens key Texas industries and jobs.”
With less than a month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the top brass are already running for cover. This week the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, pledged to cut approximately a dozen general officers from the U.S. Army.
It is a start.
But given the Army is authorized 219 general officers, cutting just 12 is using a scalpel when a machete is in order. At present, the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel stands at an all-time high. During World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Today, we have one for every 1,600.
Right now, the United States has 1.3 million active-duty service members according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. Of those, 885 are flag officers (fun fact: you get your own flag when you make general or admiral, hence the term “flag officer” and “flagship”). In the reserve world, the ratio is even worse. There are 925 general and flag officers and a total reserve force of just 760,499 personnel. That is a flag for every 674 enlisted troops.
The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.
In contrast, the Secretary of Defense — the civilian in charge of running our nation’s military — has a staff of 2,646 civilians and uniformed personnel. The disparity between the two staffs threatens the longstanding American principle of civilian control of the military.
Just look at what happens when civilians in the White House or the Senate dare question the ranks of America’s general class. “Politicizing the military!” critics cry, as if the Commander-in-Chief has no right to question the judgement of generals who botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, bought into the woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or oversaw over-budget and behind-schedule weapons systems. Introducing accountability to the general class is not politicizing our nation’s military — it is called leadership.
What most Americans don’t understand is that our top brass is already very political. On any given day in our nation’s Capitol, a casual visitor is likely to run into multiple generals and admirals visiting our elected representatives and their staff. Ostensibly, these “briefs” are about various strategic threats and weapons systems — but everyone on the Hill knows our military leaders are also jockeying for their next assignment or promotion. It’s classic politics
The country witnessed this firsthand with now-retired Gen. Mark Milley. Most Americans were put off by what they saw. Milley brazenly played the Washington spin game, bragging in a Senate Armed Services hearing that he had interviewed with Bob Woodward and a host of other Washington, D.C. reporters.
Woodward later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was flabbergasted by Milley, recalling the chairman hadn’t just said “[Trump] is a problem or we can’t trust him,” but took it to the point of saying, “he is a danger to the country. He is the most dangerous person I know.” Woodward said that Milley’s attitude felt like an assignment editor ordering him, “Do something about this.”
Think on that a moment — an active-duty four star general spoke on the record, disparaging the Commander-in-Chief. Not only did it show rank insubordination and a breach of Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88, but Milley’s actions represented a grave threat against the Constitution and civilian oversight of the military.
How will it play out now that Trump has returned? Old political hands know that what goes around comes around. Milley’s ham-handed political meddling may very well pave the way for a massive reorganization of flag officers similar to Gen. George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” of 1940. Marshall forced 500 colonels into retirement saying, “You give a good leader very little and he will succeed; you give mediocrity a great deal and they will fail.”
Marshall’s efforts to reorient the War Department to a meritocracy proved prescient when the United States entered World War II less than two years later.
Perhaps it’s time for another plucking board to remind the military brass that it is their civilian bosses who sit at the top of the U.S. chain of command.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
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