Johannes Petry is the principal investigator of the StateCapFinance research project at Goethe University in Frankfurt. He is a political economist researching postcrisis transformations within the global financial system, such as the internationalization of China’s financial system, the politics of financial infrastructures in global finance, and the growing importance of non-Western financial practices as well as the shift toward “green” asset-manager capitalism.
Despite both right-wing hysterics about “woke capital” and the optimistic claims of Wall Street, ESG has done very little to steer investment in more socially responsible directions. Aggressive state action is needed to rapidly green the economy.