Let's start with you because we've talked about ESG investing before I've taken you say in principle short on the
environmental part of the climate. Absolutely. But there aren't that many opportunities. What are we seeing ESG investment now.
Because it was very very hot. And now there's a lot of questioning of it.
I think it's still certainly very hot in certain circles anyway. I as you may remember from our conversations I've always been
somewhat skeptical of it as an investment tool. If you want to look at ESG principles as a shareholder because you believe
that's what's right for the country for your company for yourself or anybody you're a shareholder. You're an owner. It's
capitalism. You have a right to say vote do whatever you think is right. But if you look at it as on the theory that somehow
you're going to produce superior investing returns by investing alongside of ESG guidelines for restrictions whatever you want
to call them I am deeply skeptical. I've seen little to no evidence to suggest that that's true. At best it's kind of a
push. At worst it may be counterproductive. I can give you an anecdote which is a company like Unilever which was way out in
front on ESG issues. Maybe they got distracted. Maybe they didn't. But they way underperformed. They've got an activist on
their board and so on. And so I I just think you have to separate ESG as something you want to do as a shareholder for
something that you think is going to actually make the company more money.
Larry where is the line between ESG or let's stick with environmental for the frozen foods because I think it's hard to
quantify these for me and the S and the G part but environmental. Where's the line between just ESG investing on
the one hand. On the other hand really being concerned about long term risk is there certainly are long term risks for
companies based on the environment climate. Look I think that people should make investments
largely on the basis of what the ultimate prospects are. I think the problem comes when people who really have an environmental
motivation try to attach an economic motivation and make economic arguments that aren't really very strong. I think
there's been a whole movement in the central banking community to start focusing on what they call climate risks as if those
were central systemic financial risks. And I don't think the evidence has ever been produced that genuine concern about
systemic financial risk of the kind we had in 2008 during the crisis of the kind that reared its head in the immediate
aftermath of Covid that that is something that is likely to come from climate issues. Seems to me to be quite remote risk. And I
think a lot of the enthusiasm came from people who couldn't legislate things about climate through the front door. And so
they want to try to legislate them through the back door through central bank regulatory policies that I'm not really very
enthusiastic about. All of that and more generally I think some of what has
what little evidence there is of positive returns to environmental investing. I don't think
reflects so much that it's a way of picking companies that are going to outperform. It's the fact that this was a growing
movement. And so first companies that backed that met certain green tests had a little bit of green investment and then a lot
more green investment poured into them. So their stock prices went up. But it was really driven by the pressure from the
investors market price pressure from the investors not buy anything about the underlying fundamental realities of the
company. Well I think there's also a danger. I think there's a danger in this
which is that I think many in the business community or at least some in the business community celebrate these processes of
their own making pronouncements of one kind or other and encouraging various kinds of investments. And if that they think
that if they make enough noise in that direction they can avoid strong public policies. My sense is that this is not going to be
resolved without strong public policies. And a lot of this business cheerleading has a bit of a subtle motive to suggest
that the problem is being addressed without the need for strong public policies. So Steve just last word to you here. Larry
raises entering the prospect. Is it possible that some of the rush to ESG investing as we saw a lot of CEOs saying they're
outperforming ESG investing is outperforming the S&P 500 now it seems to reverse. Was it a rising tide that is now going out.
Look I am as I said I have not seen a lot of evidence that he is she investing has ever outperformed or is outperforming other
ways of investing I think. And I think as a matter of pure investing theory you could argue that if you constrain the kinds
of investments you're willing to make based on a set of criteria that aren't necessarily directly related to profitability. All
things being equal your returns should be all. And again I'm not advocating going out and investing in a lot of companies that
are environmentally dangerous or polluting simply because you might be able to make more money. I'm simply saying that you
that invest you have to be careful about how many different boxes you try to check in the course of investing. But I must
say one last thing because I think Larry touched on a really important broad point. I think as a society we're looking to
other institutions whether it's the Federal Reserve or central banks or whether it's corporations or what have you to solve
problems. Washington is not willing to take on and I think we need to push back in the other direction and say it's not the
Fed's job to solve every problem. It's not companies jobs to solve every problem. The executive branch the legislative branch
have to step up and get some stuff done here. I suspect Larry you'd agree with that. Briefly.
Yes absolutely I think that Steve is making exactly the point that I'm making I would add that I think some of the motivation
for some of happy talk in the private sector may be to discourage
public efforts which they don't want to say. That's why I was kind of glad to see Larry Fink signaling that he thought strong
public policies were necessary.