Donald Trump, acting in the full capacity of the US president — with all the power the role affords — has shown blatant contempt for the niceties of governance. He’s entitled.
However much those norms deserve a reality check — and they do — Trump’s version of a reality check is throwing world order into the wood chipper. Whether that chills or thrills depends on your politics — but ultimately, it’s just swapping one capacity fiction for another.
Neither is genuine. Both are opaque. A better approach? Look past the noise. Workarounds may be more effective than battling a distraction designed to engage you… infuriate you… head on.
Instead of taking the bait, identify who can revoke his fishing license. It may not be the game warden, but a leverage point upstream — or a different stream altogether.
Topic of the day: “Capacity”
If power is a circuit, capacity is measured in farads — a capacitor's ability to store and release a charge.
A high-farad capacitor that discharges too quickly fries the system. Call that overreach. For example, Trump.
A low-farad capacitor that holds charge indefinitely serves no function. Call that under reach. For example, fiduciary-led pension plans.
A balanced-farad capacitor releases power at the right time. Call that calculated. The best examples aren’t virtuous or benevolent — they are cold, indifferent, competitive, strategic, self-reinforcing, and effective.
Trump — lots of power, quick to discharge — is testing the elasticity of capacity more than any modern head of state. Leaders with similar or like capacities like Xi, Putin or Modi might even be surprised with how quickly their own authoritarian ways have begun to seem more reasonable.
Overreach is easy to see.
Under reach requires a different lens — and an honest accounting of our own capacitance to make the change we want. Power imbalances are also caused by the failure of powerful institutions to act to their ability.
For example, Bank of Nature continues to explore the capacity of fiduciary-led pensions to do more in the economy — because they can, and they have the legal obligation to act at scale. Yet they don’t.
They have a purpose: To secure a dignified future for the very people funding these plans.
They have discretion within the limits of their instructions that requires loyalty, care and impartiality across a spectrum of plan participants.
They have scale: Billions and trillions in dollars, decades in forward time horizons.
This is the capacity of a fiduciary-led pension fund making it one of the most potent economic actors in the world, yet it fails to use capacity strategically and operates at a fraction of its potential. Instead, they:
Yield to Wall Street, rather than dictating the financial terms that align with their long-term duties.
Act as liquidity providers for financial engineering, instead of enforcing fiduciary-grade financing strategies.
Outsource decisions to asset managers who do not share their obligations.
Refined topic of the day: “Like capacity”
A fiduciary must “with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims.”
— ERISA
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act is the federal law governing private-sector pensions like 401(k) plans and corporate pension funds. It sets a clear standard for fiduciary duty including the requirement for prudence compared with entities of “like capacity.” Public pensions, like retirement plans for civil servants, have laws that mimic ERISA language almost verbatim, making “like capacity” a legal standard for all pension plans. The aggregated value of pensions in the US is $28 trillion.
The “like capacity” comps for $28 trillion:
US pension funds hold an amount roughly equal to the entire annual economic output of the United States.
US pensions alone exceed the GDP of China, the world’s second-largest economy, and are triple the combined economies of Japan and Germany.
Pension funds own more than 50% of the entire US stock market’s value.
If liquidated, pensions could erase most of the US government’s $34 trillion debt.
Pension funds hold more than four times the US government's annual budget.
US pensions could buy “The Magnificent 7” (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla) twice.
Pension funds hold double the combined wealth of every billionaire on Earth.
Furthermore, if public pension fiduciaries are to be judged by their “like capacity” peers, who are those peers? The world’s largest financial and institutional actors, each of which fails to meet its full potential.
Like pension fiduciaries:
The United Nations wields immense latent power but often dilutes its own influence with internal limitations, deference to outside actors, and systemic inertia. The result? Half-measures where decisive action is possible.
The Federal Reserve (or another central bank) controls trillions in financial levers and reinforces existing power structures rather than reshaping them for systemic stability.
The Catholic Church (or another large religious institution) holds enormous moral and economic power to influence global decision-making, yet consistently avoids meaningful intervention, allowing harmful status quos to persist.
Sovereign Wealth Funds, university endowments and insurance companies each control vast sums intended for long-term resilience —whether state capital, intergenerational wealth, or pooled insurance risk. Yet, despite their scale and leverage, they underperform, failing to demand structural changes in global finance that would ultimately serve their own interests.
By this measure, pension funds don’t look particularly different from their peers — meaning that a “like capacity” argument is presently affirmed legally because the entire group is under reaching its capacity in deference to the status quo. The largest institutions in the global village have voluntarily hidden their power, choosing political docility over mission-driven action.
The like-capacity to fight like-capacity
More fitting "like capacity" comps don’t play nice — as if effectiveness depends on virtue rather than strategy, precision and intent.
Walmart, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and OPEC exemplify large-scale power that doesn’t don’t ask for permission. They dictate terms, structure compliance, and ensure their dominance is self-reinforcing. Their effectiveness is not driven by philanthropy or morality but by cohesive, self-serving strategy.
What Walmart, BRI and OPEC get right
Strategic power over ideology: None of these entities act impulsively or for abstract social good. Their strategies reflect long-term planning, systemic influence, and material outcomes that serve their priorities.
Scale as leverage: They control vast resources and financial influence, deploying them at critical moments for maximum impact — not too soon, not too late.
Commanding market position:
Walmart → Dictates terms across its supply chains, forcing suppliers to comply with its pricing and sustainability models.
OPEC → Controls oil supply to regulate global pricing, ensuring its member states retain economic leverage.
BRI → Creates infrastructure dependencies that extend China’s influence over trade and geopolitics.
Self-Sustaining Influence: Their decisions reinforce their dominance — Walmart’s supply chain dictates market standards, China’s loans secure future economic dependence, and OPEC’s production control locks nations into oil-based economies.
These entities wield their power in a way that ensures they remain central, indispensable forces in their respective domains.
The lesson for fiduciary finance
Make financial markets dependent on fiduciary capital → Fiduciaries must stop acting as passive investors and start dictating terms.
Control scarcity and access → Just as OPEC restricts oil supply to maintain leverage, fiduciary funds should limit capital access to financial structures that fail to align with long-term value.
Structure deals to lock in future influence → Like BRI ensures economic dependence, fiduciaries should craft investments that create permanent structural advantages for beneficiaries.
Enforce compliance as a condition of capital access → Just as Walmart enforces supplier compliance and OPEC dictates oil production, fiduciaries must require long-term alignment as a prerequisite for investment.
Stop playing defense
Complaints don’t change systems — leverage does.
Who has the capacity to act?
Who has the tools to intervene?
Who has dormant power that could be used but isn’t?
Where aren’t we looking for those candidates?
There is untapped power in places that have nothing to do with Trump directly but everything to do with systemic control — power that could be redirected toward climate security, economic justice, and fiduciary integrity as a “positive externality” – an unexpected benefit.
Climate advocates have leverage in fiduciary-led pensions, which control trillions in capital yet fail to use it for long-term security.
Gen Z has the leverage to curate their own future — but only if they recognize their legal claim to demand it.
Anti-neoliberals and critics of extractive economics have leverage, but it requires engagement with financial mechanisms they distrust — capital markets, institutional investing, and fiduciary finance — not to reinforce them, but to use that engagement as a fulcrum for change.
Getting capacity right
In a competition of "like capacity," Trump's overreach can be neutralized by correcting fiduciary under reach. No, it’s not an obvious direct line — but that’s the point. Redirecting trillions toward a capacity balance doesn’t just fix finance — it weakens despots whose power thrives indirectly on fiduciary failure.
Fiduciaries must act as financial superpowers by leveraging their trillions not just for market returns, but for systemic alignment with their long-term obligations. That starts with reclaiming control over financial terms, investment conditions, and capital access — dictating, not deferring. Regulators and courts must enforce fiduciary breaches not just for fraud, but for inaction, which is how Bank of Nature is tackling the capacity issue. The people with the standing and the wherewithal to take on the Goliath exist. The public must recognize fiduciary finance — like fiduciary-led pensions — as a hidden lever for systemic change.
If fiduciaries treated capital not as something to be placed, but as something to be wielded in accordance with their legal scope, financial markets wouldn’t just shift toward capacity balance. They would be forced to realign, not by conscience, but by design.