Republicans have proposed a bill to fight what they see as one of the most difficult issues facing America today:
Woke capitalism.
Republican Senators Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania and Dan Sullivan from Alaska have introduced the INDEX Act to curb Wall Street’s control over corporate ownership.
The Investor Democracy is Expected Act is also designed to fight against the voting power that’s becoming increasingly concentrated within Wall Street’s largest advisors and their index funds.
Senator Pat Toomey said that the bill would take the power from Wall Street, and put it in the hands of who it should be:
Average Americans.
“In recent years,” Toomey said. “A small handful of large index fund managers have used a quirk in securities law to vote shares purchased with other people’s money. The INDEX Act returns voting power to the real shareholders — retail investors who put their own money at risk. Further democratizing investing and diminishing the consolidation of corporate voting power are concepts members of both parties should get behind.”
Sullivan added that “The American people deserve the opportunity to vote on behalf of their investments, including those made in index funds. Massive Wall Street firms should not be able to coopt this voting power to essentially control our entire public market. Currently, the three largest investment advisers vote nearly one-quarter of all shares cast at annual meetings, and are the largest shareholders in over 90 percent of S&P 500 companies. The INDEX Act would correct this extreme market distortion by simply requiring that the power to vote shares resides with the fund investors, not the advisers. This would democratize corporate governance and largely eliminate the influence that these firms wield at shareholder meetings, often to push political agendas. It would also remove these firms as a gateway for special interest groups who push radical agendas through corporate governance that they could not otherwise achieve through the traditional political process.”
Eleven other Republican Senators have endorsed the bill as well.
Source: Breitbart
