Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Is the President of Nasdaq a Socialist?

 Adena Friedman 

By Robert Wenzel

Nasdaq has filed a social justice warrior proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt new listing rules related to board diversity and disclosure of companies that trade on Nasdaq. 

Under the proposal, most Nasdaq-listed companies would be required to have, or explain why they do not have, at least two directors with diverse backgrounds, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ.

There goes the profit and loss system for the "profit loss superseded by identitarian demands" system.

“Our goal with this proposal is to provide a transparent framework for Nasdaq-listed companies to present their board composition and diversity philosophy effectively to all stakeholders; we believe this listing rule is one step in a broader journey to achieve inclusive representation across corporate America,” Nasdaq President and Chief Executive Officer Adena Friedman said in a statement.

So how did this madness reach the upper echelons of Nasdaq?

You don't have to look beyond Friedman. 

Of the 41 Influencers that she follows as interests at LinkedIn, the list includes Bill Gates, Justin Trudeau, and Poppy Harlow. Enough said right there.

Her Bachelor of Arts degree is in political science and government. That is a big warning signal. I have never come across anyone with a political degree who doesn't have a central planning mentality. Maybe there are a few somewhere on this planet but I have never come across them.

She exposed her central planning thinking during a TED talk she delivered. It was one of the most boring TED talks I have ever listened to. Mostly she discussed "price discovery" as though this was some new concept that hasn't been around since the start of indirect exchange.

But she did reveal in her talk, which was titled "What is the Future of Capitalism?", how she viewed the role of government when it comes to capitalism.

She said in her talk that capitalism works well when there is a strong government.

She added that government plays three roles in relation to capitalism.

1. Fostering healthy competition via antitrust, corporate regulation and incentivizing small business 

2. By establishing priorities like clean energy

3, By the government making investments itself in such sectors as healthcare, education and defense.

She then added that it was clear to see that capitalism is just a part of a broader system that includes a well-balanced government.

Of course, anyone with a familiarity with free-market foundations will recognize that what Friedman is discussing is not capitalism but steps on the road of the planned society.

She thinks like a central planner.

The Noble Prize winner F.A. Hayek's observation surely applies to Friedman:

 The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.

Nasdaq has, at its top, a leader who thinks like a central planner who wants to bring her central planning views into the board rooms of corporate America with her demands that corporations focus on identitarianism which is the exact opposite of meritocracy.

It is another step toward the collapse of Western Civilization and the march toward serfdom. A step toward harsh socialism.

Yes, the head of Nasdaq is a socialist who wants to institute identitarianism on the corporations who trade on the exchange.

I hope the NYSE takes full advantage of this madness.

Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.

6 comments:

  1. The world has gone mad. Every day brings a fresh, firehose-torrent of nonsense and insanity.
    The rapidity with which our long-standing, time-tested values, institutions and cultural-underpinnings are being undermined or overturned, for the sake of change and revolution, is making my head spin; I'm more convinced daily that Reign of Terror 2.0 is somewhere on the horizon.

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  2. Good opportunity for other exchanges.

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  3. Another great post. I see no understanding of her incredible ignorance in the MSM. I believe it was von Mises who observed that as long as there existed a stock exchange where transactions were driven mostly by price seeking traders, freedom was alive. Freidman's policy is a terrible development.

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  4. Man, I hate to say it. But, all in all, it's gotta be a chick thing.

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  5. I would say that the top level people in all mega corporations are Socialists. They know that Socialism ultimately benefits them at the expense of the Middle and Upper Middle Classes.

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