“Talent and intellect are equally distributed, opportunity is not…”

This is the claim made by the World Economic Forum in a recent video describing their intention to create a more “democratized” stock market.

Obviously, the truth is the opposite; talent and intellect are not equally distributed, but every person is given the opportunity to take a shot and attempt to succeed.  Any democratized economic policy would seek to change all of that.

The WEF program seems to run parallel to the ESG related woke ideology that has been spreading like a cancer into major corporations and western governments.  While promoting fairness in investing, the WEF addresses theory while ignoring practice.  How would such fairness be achieved?  What is the WEF definition of fairness?

If we go by the common ideological mantras of globalists and the political left, fairness for them means equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.  There are no significant barriers to the average person buying stocks, but nearly half the population of countries like the US stay out of retail markets.  Why?  Is it a lack of “equity”, or is it something else?

The WEF seems to address this issue without directly admitting the problem.  Trust is in fact the issue, and people distrust markets because they are openly rigged to a certain extent.

The WEF glances over this concern as if it is unjustified or requires more government intervention.  Yet, over a decade of government and central bank manipulation of markets is proof enough that certain corporations and certain financial mechanisms are protected while others are not.  At least, not until recently…

It’s interesting that the WEF is announcing its goal to make investing more democratic at the very moment that western banks are on the verge of an unprecedented credit crunch.  With the implosion of SVB, the buyout of Credit Suisse, the crash of First Republic and Signature, the financial system is fast approaching a reckoning.

U.S. corporate bankruptcies are rising in 2023, with the first two months of the year registering the highest total for any comparable period since 2011, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.  In other words, bankruptcies are on pace to hit a 12 year high.

Echoes of the crash of 2008/2009 are ringing in people’s ears and they are rightly suspicious of markets.  But what about short selling?  Can the public make money through shorts?  Well, that’s not allowed.  While globalists want more investment activity at a time of major risk, they are also adamant that people only be allowed to buy in, rather than going short.

This double standard has culminated in the mass chastising of investors that went short on failing banks like SVB, as regulators and elitists like Jamie Dimon partially blame social media driven short selling for the crash and demand that people who do such organizing be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

In a completely interconnected world, how do the globalists plan to get billions of people to invest in stocks without them organizing, data sharing or engaging in activism, and with equal outcome?  Either everyone wins, or everyone loses within their theoretical investment democracy.  How do markets function without both winners and losers?

The dynamics that are being established seem to be designed to encourage or perhaps even force the public into market participation.  The WEF’s goals would not be met unless wages were somehow garnered through government regulation and invested without people’s consent or oversight.  Otherwise, skepticism will continue to rule the day and half the population (or more) will continue to bow out.

Or, maybe the goal is not to save the system as it exists, but to lure the populace in today, bounce stocks for a time, and then let the bottom drop out tomorrow while destroying everyone’s wealth simultaneously (except the wealth of insiders and bailout recipients, of course).  It’s hard to say.  What we do know is that ESG related programs are a major contributor to the decline of US banks like SVB, so how would ESG programs for stock markets possibly help?

Article cross-posted from Zero Hedge.