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Woke 401(k) rule quietly moves forward
Almost exactly one year ago, the US Department of Labor issued a regulation requiring that employers and their financial advisers choose employee investment plans based solely on financial factors… and nothing else.
Even more specifically, the regulation prevents employers from choosing a mutual fund or ETF whose main objectives are anything other than financial, i.e. mutual funds which place social or environmental justice above investment returns.
The rule effectively stopped employers from injecting their personal beliefs into their employees retirement plans.
Yet earlier this year, new Labor Department under the administration of Hunter Biden’s dad announced that they would no longer enforce this rule.
Three weeks ago they went a step further and created a new regulation called “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments”.
This new rule proposes to formally reverse the old regulation by expressly allowing businesses to “make investment decisions that reflect climate change and other environmental, social, or governance (“ESG”) considerations. . .”
The proposed regulation goes on for THIRTY THREE PAGES and outlines every possible woke investment initiative imaginable.
For example, the rule allows employers to invest your savings in a stock based solely on that company’s “progress on workforce diversity [and] inclusion. . .” as opposed to, you know, profit and growth potential.
But there’s something even more striking about this regulation.
Normally whenever the federal government proposes new rules and regulations, they give the public an opportunity to comment on the proposal… and these comments are made public.
In this case the comments are, in fact, NOT public.
The rule even claims that all comments will be made available on www.regulations.gov and www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa
Yet public comments to this regulation are available at neither website.
Moreover, the rule also states that public comments will be made available to anyone who physically visits the Employee Benefits Security Administration’s (EBSA) office in Washington DC.
Yet according to the EBSA website, they have “temporarily moved to telephone and website contact only” because of COVID-1984.
So, at the moment, all public comments for this new regulation are being quietly buried as the deadline for its passage (December 13th) quickly approaches.
Click here to read the proposed rule.
Who's being lawful now is the ultimate question
