Banks

How Banks Against Wealth Building By Blacks After 2008 Crash

April 25, 2018 Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wallstreetonparade.com Educate! Banks, New Economy, Racial inequality, Wall Street

If you get your business news from the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg News or the New York Times or Reuters or the Financial Times or CNBC, chances are you did not hear about a critically important symposium that was held on Monday on the dangers that Wall Street’s biggest banks continue to pose to the U.S. economy and, in particular, to communities of color. Adding to the mystery of how every major business news outlet could simultaneously decide to skip the event is that it was headlined by two famous players in the banking debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The symposium on “Too Big to Fail” was hosted by Howard University’s Department of Economics and held at the campus which is located in Washington, DC – where there is certainly no shortage of reporters.

US CEO Pay, Bank Profits, Corporate Cash Set New Records

April 20, 2018 Barry Grey, Wsws.org Educate! Banks, CEO, Corporations

Across the United States, workers are being told by Democrats and Republicans alike that there is “no money” for decent wages, pensions or health care. Teachers from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and other states are rebelling against near-poverty wages and years of school cuts only to be told by the politicians and union leaders that their demands are “unrealistic” and cannot be met. But a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are wallowing in record levels of wealth. The Washington Post reported on Friday that, boosted by the tax cut for corporations and the rich passed in December, the biggest US firms “find themselves sitting on an Everest of cash,” with “profits pouring in faster than they can find productive ways to spend it.”

22 Million Reasons Black America Doesn’t Trust Banks

March 6, 2018 Marcus Anthony Hunter, Theconversation.com Educate! Banks, Black Capitalism, Black History, New Economy, Racism

“This bank is just what the freedmen need,” remarked President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865, as he signed the Freedman’s Bank Act, authorizing the organization of a national bank for recently emancipated black Americans. A little more than a month later he was killed, making the Freedman’s Bank Lincoln’s last act of emancipation. His assassination, however, did not impede its rapid growth. By January 1874, less than ten years after the establishment of the Freedman’s Bank, deposits at its 34 branches across the United States totaled US$3,299,201 ($65,200,000 in current dollars). Despite such successful expansion, the Freedman’s Bank closed on June 28, 1874 under a shroud of suspicion and accusation. The story of the rise and collapse of the Freedman’s Bank is an important and little known episode in black and American history in the years following Emancipation.

FANG Collective Declares Victory In The Shame On Citizens Campaign

March 6, 2018 By Steve Ahlquist, Upriseri.com Resist! Banks, Investment, Pipelines

On Thursday activists and organizers with The FANG Collective, the Shame On Citizens campaign and other groups celebrated after learning that Citizens Bank had ended their financing of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Citizens Bank faced waves of demonstrations last year over their dealings with ETP and their sister company Sunoco Logistics. This included a lock-down action at the Citizens Bank headquarter building in Providence on March 2, 2017 carried out by the FANG Collective. Three people were arrested as part of the action. ETP is one of the most reckless corporations on the planet. Across the continent they have desecrated waterways and used violence and intimidation to try and silence opposition. ETP must be held accountable for their actions. We need more financial institutions to do what Citizens Bank has done and cut their ties with ETP.

Rothschild Passing Dynasty On To 7th Generation, Marking 200 Years Of Banker Family Rule

March 5, 2018 By Rachel Blevins, Activistpost.com Educate! Banks, Ruling Class

The Rothschild banking empire will ensure that its control continues to stay within the family for a seventh generation as David de Rothschild, 75, is set to hand the role of chairman over to his son, Alexandre de Rothschild, 37, in June. The banking dynasty has been passed between generations for the last 200 years. It was started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild as a French railway company, and five of his sons went on to establish banking businesses across Europe. Financial Times reported that the investment bank is currently pushing to “diversify from its core French and British advisory business to help it ride out less buoyant periods in Europe’s mergers and acquisitions market.” The new chairman joined the bank in 2008, and he has helped to set up and oversee the private equity business.

Citigroup Will Refund $330 Million To Credit Card Customers It Overcharged

March 3, 2018 Staff, Publicbankinginstitute.org Educate! Banks, Citigroup, New Economy

Oops. $330 MILLION is a rather large mistake. Citi hiked credit card holders’ interest rates immediately after two late payments, then never corrected them as required after the customers paid on time for the next six months. Half of the credit card customers got no reduction to interest rates at all. Half got only a small reduction. Citigroup said it would refund about $330 million to consumers after discovering it had overcharged 1.75 million credit card accounts on their annual interest rates. The mistake was discovered after a “periodic internal review,” not via an external regulator, and the mistakes had been going on since 2011. That’s seven years of overcharging 1.75 million customers on their interest rates, which seems a very long time to take to discover a mistake of this magnitude, especially when you consider customers are punished immediately after just two months of being late on a payment date.

Big Banks Got Huge Tax Cuts, Then Hiked States’ And Cities’ Interest Rates

March 2, 2018 Staff, Publicbankinginstitute.org Educate! Banks, Big Banks, New Economy, Taxes

The monster banks get monster tax cuts … then turn around and hike interest rates for states and cities. The hikes could translate into millions of dollars of extra costs for cash-strapped municipalities. Creating Public Banks would cut these middlemen — along with the enormous soaring drain of interest payments and fees — out of public budgets. Bloomberg: “It takes away from money that would help the state’s reserve, or it takes away from money the state may appropriate for other statewide public purposes,” said David Erdman, the capital finance director for Wisconsin, whose payments on a $279 million loan will jump by about $750,000 next year.

Trump & Fed: Shadow Bankers Deepening Control Of US Economy

January 26, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Educate! Banks, Finance and Economy, Trump Administration

Trump's imminent appointments of Fed chairs, vice-chairs and governors may prove the first step in the total capture of the US central bank by the shadow banker element in the US economy. What are sometimes referred to as 'shadow bankers' have been running the economy and drafting US domestic economic policy since Trump took office. 'Shadow banks' include investment banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, finance companies, and asset management companies. They exist outside the traditional commercial banking system (for example: Chase, Bank of America, Wells) and are virtually unregulated. Globally, they now control more investible liquid assets than do the world's commercial banks.

An SF City Bank Is Not Only Possible — It’s A Great Idea

January 4, 2018 Tim Redmond, 48hills.org Create! Banks, New Economy, Public Banks, San Francisco

San Francisco faces no legal obstacles and no significant policy problems with creating a municipal bank, a recent report from the city’s budget and legislative analyst concludes. The report, released late in November with very little news media fanfare, represents a major step towards putting the city’s sizable financial resources into community development, affordable housing, and small businesses instead of the profits of giant, corrupt financial institutions. The report hinges in part on a change in the position of the City Attorney’s Office. In 2011, when then-Sup. John Avalos raised the issue, the budget analyst reported that state law would ban a municipal bank. But since then, after detailed research, City Attorney Dennis Herrera has concluded that “in fact, State law does not preclude the city from creating a bank as a separate legal entity.”

US Bank Declares End To Oil And Gas Pipeline Loans

December 26, 2017 By Sharon Kelly, Desmogblog.com Educate! Banks, Gas, Loans, Oil, Pipelines

For months, the bank had been under fire for financing the Dakota Access pipeline by providing over a quarter billion dollars worth of funding to its builder, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Environmentalists famously dropped a banner calling on U.S. Bank to divest from DAPL at the New Years 2017 Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears football game. The language of the bank's new policy seemed blunt. “The company does not provide project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines,” U.S. Bancorp, parent company of U.S. Bank, wrote in its April 2017 Environmental Responsibility Policy. Divestment advocates cheered. “We applaud this progressive decision from U.S. Bank,” an Honor the Earth representative said in a statement, as the bank's new policy made headlines.

Seattle Municipal Bank–A Future For US All

December 14, 2017 Matt Remle and Nikkita Oliver, southseattleemerald.com Create! Banks, Budgets, Seattle

It was in early August 2016, as bulldozers desecrated grave sites and sacred lands along the Cannonball River on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. As private security unleashed attack dogs on water protectors, it became clear our efforts to stop the Dakota Access pipeline through our moral, Tribal and environmental arguments were less and less effective. Just one day before the mass desecration, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s historic preservation officer handed to a judge a detailed map of where these burial sites and sacred sites were located. To Energy Transfer Partners, the Army Corp of Engineers and the State of North Dakota, the destruction of the bones of our ancestors, sacred sites, violation of Treaty rights and the contamination of our drinking water were simply not compelling enough reasons to not build the massive oil pipeline.

BlackRock Wields Its $6 Trillion Club To Combat Climate Risks

December 11, 2017 Emily Chasan, bloomberg.com Educate! Activism, Banks, Climate Change, Divestment

BlackRock, along with investors such as UBS Asset Management and JPMorgan Chase & Co., is a participant in the task force led by Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg. The group concluded in June that companies affected by climate change should conduct scenario analyses and include those results in their financial reports. BlackRock sees this framework as “a means to achieve the comparability and consistency of reporting that is important to us as investors,” it said in the letter. The move is the latest by BlackRock on climate change after casting its first votes this year in favor of shareholder proposals asking companies such as Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to provide more detail on the topic. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said in his annual letter to CEOs earlier this year that the New York-based firm would not be “infinitely patient” with companies on environmental and social issues that carry long-term risks.

Former Governor Of Bank Of Spain: Public Entity Should Create Money

December 6, 2017 Staff, publicbankinginstitute.org Create! Banks, Money, Public Banking, Spain

By Staff of Public Banking Institute - Positive Money, the monetary reform group based in the UK, posts that Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, former governor of Bank of Spain, is now recommending money creation by public entity instead of by private banks. He references the advances in technology that would allow safe public issuing. He came to the Spanish Lower House on Nov 7, 2017 and said the following: “In the latest years, some analysts have emerged who are evaluating the possibility to change current money creation system by private banks and to substitute it with another one which would let every citizen deposit their money at central banks. These studies have surged, because the technological advances in the computing and data storage, have made it technically possible today for money to be issued by the State, and not by private banks which would be of course doing their businesses in the assets’ side, but without the need that their problems should be resolved by the State, as deposits would be completely safe at the issuing bank. The possibility to issue public and safe money thanks to new technologies, according to these researchers, would have positive consequences, not only for the system's stability, but also to reduce or even do without the huge prudential regulation which is today damaging financial innovation.

Big Banks Are Committing Major Crimes Against The Climate

November 6, 2017 Alison Kirsch, alternet.org Educate! Banks, Big Banks, Climate Change, Corporate crime

By Alison Kirsch for AlterNet - At the start of next week, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N.'s negotiating body on climate change, will meet in Germany to discuss next steps after the historic agreement by 195 countries to curb global climate change to 1.5° Celsius, or 2° at most—an agreement whose only logical conclusion is that the world cannot afford expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Various players in the financial industry have talked a big game on their commitments to the Paris Agreement. But their business practices prove otherwise. According to the new report Funding Tar Sands: Private Banks vs. the Paris Climate Agreement, in the first three quarters of 2017, major international banks have financed the extraction and transportation of tar sands at levels one and a half times higher than in the whole of 2016. How can it be that in the last 9 months, $32 billion has gone to an extreme fossil fuel whose development is flatly incompatible with meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement? Moreover, banks continue to stand behind their clients whose proposed tar sands projects, from Teck Resources' Frontier open-pit mine, to Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline, would further damn our climate and infringe upon Indigenous rights.

Indigenous-Led Protest Shuts Down Banks In Seattle

October 26, 2017 Sydney Brownstone, www.thestranger.com Resist! Banks, Indigenous People, Protests, Seattle

By Sydney Brownstone for The Stranger - At 11 o'clock this morning, four people chained themselves to a structure blocking an entrance of the Bank of America on 5th and Olive Street. Two of them locked themselves to the apex of a tripod, suspended at least a dozen feet in the air. The protesters were still there as of 2 p.m, blocking people from entering the bank. Around the corner of the building was Feanette Black Bear, 65, holding the end of a sign blocking the building's other entrance and a bundle of sage. "We shut down business today!" she said. For Black Bear, who is Lakota, today's action grows out of what she calls "an awakening for future generations." "I'm here in support of our future generations, the unborn, and for the people here today, for Mni Wiconi, for treaty rights," Black Bear said, using the Lakota rallying cry heard at Standing Rock last year, and since then, the world over. In Lakota, Mni Wiconi translates to "water is life." The Bank of America protest is just one of 100 demonstrations taking place across Seattle as part of Divest the Globe, a three-day activism campaign organized by Mazaska Talks, an indigenous-led coalition including Lakota educator Matt Remle and Muckleshoot activist Rachel Heaton, with support from 350 Seattle's Alec Connon. Remle reported on Twitter that at least one other bank was shut down in Seattle.

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