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Big Banks

Six Of The Largest US Banks Leave Net Zero Alliance Ahead Of Trump

Six of the largest banks in the United States have bowed out of the global Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), with the inauguration of Donald Trump predicted to bring political backlash concerning climate action, reported The Guardian. The latest to withdraw is JP Morgan, which followed Citigroup and Bank of America. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have also left the United Nations-sponsored NZBA since the beginning of December. “JPMC is ending our membership in the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our Firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security.

Over 800 Euro Banks Invest In Companies Supporting Illegal Settlements

The Don’t Buy into Occupation (DBIO) coalition has issued its 2024 report highlighting the international companies and financial institutions that are actively involved with illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The DBIO coalition is a joint project between 24 Palestinian, regional, and European organizations. The newly released report shows that over the past three years, “822 European financial institutions (including banks, asset managers, insurance companies, and pension funds) had financial relationships with 58 companies that are actively involved with illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”

Summer Of Heat Is Using Disruption To End Fossil Fuel Financing

With millions being displaced by wildfires and floods, famine spreading and entire countries getting submerged, the fossil fuel industry is driving us off the cliff and must be stopped. One strategy the climate movement can take to turn the tide is pressuring economic elites to remove their backing for Big Oil. This is the main focus of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, a sustained campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against financiers like Citigroup, which has poured more money into fossil fuel expansion than any other bank in the world since 2016. Since June 10, the campaign has organized multiple disruptive civil disobedience actions every single week.

Banks Financed Fossil Fuels By $6.9 Trillion Since The Paris Agreement

The 15th annual Banking on Climate Chaos (BOCC) report employs a new, expanded data set that credits each bank making financial contributions to a deal instead of only crediting banks in leading roles. It cuts through greenwash, covering the world’s top 60 banks’ lending and underwriting to over 4,200 fossil fuel companies and the financing of companies causing the degradation of the Amazon and Arctic. Backgrounder of the report’s key findings can be found here. Since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $6.9 trillion. Nearly half – $3.3 trillion – went towards fossil fuel expansion.

Communities Protest Banking Giant’s Annual Meeting Over Environmental Racism

Activists from the world are uniting against Dutch banking giant ING’s environmental racism. Specifically, at the company’s upcoming AGM they plan to call out ING’s financing of a big polluter and climate-wrecking industries harming marginalised communities throughout the Global North and South. On Monday 22 April community defenders from the US, Mexico, Brazil, Liberia, and the Czech Republic will attend ING’s AGM to call out the company’s financing for destructive big polluters. Fossil fuel finance accountability non-profit BankTrack and Netherlands climate campaign group Fossielvrij have facilitated their travel to Amsterdam, to take on the banking giant at this key meeting.

Indigenous Leaders, Land Defenders Censored At RBC’s Annual Meeting

Indigenous leaders and land defenders attended Royal Bank of Canada’s 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 11 to send the bank their message: put an end to fossil fuel financing. Delegates from across North America travelled to Toronto, O to criticize RBC’s ongoing funding of fossil fuel projects and their violations of Indigenous and human rights. But RBC’s efforts to listen to Indigenous and frontline land defenders were shallow to say the least. During the questioning period, a mere 60 seconds were allotted to delegates, some of which were interrupted by RBC’s board, executives and shareholders.

The Fed Is Behind The Credit Card Merger

It’s an obvious point, but credit cards in America generate a lot of cash for banks. In 2022, I wrote up how the business works, with the observation that the industry generates close to a quarter trillion dollars a year in revenue. This revenue comes from fees for connecting merchants and banks, as well as fees charged to consumers for access to credit. Every credit card network is also a data sieve, connected to advertising data brokers, anti-fraud features, and analytics firms. In addition, being able to reject someone from the payments system is a core sovereign power, and the stated reason the right is so afraid of a central bank digital currency.

Defusing The Derivatives Time Bomb: Some Proposed Solutions

This is a sequel to a Jan. 15 article titled “Casino Capitalism and the Derivatives Market: Time for Another ‘Lehman Moment’?”, discussing the threat of a 2024 “black swan” event that could pop the derivatives bubble. That bubble is now over ten times the GDP of the world and is so interconnected and fragile that an unanticipated crisis could trigger the collapse not just of the bubble but of the economy. To avoid that result, in the event of the bankruptcy of a major financial institution, derivative claimants are put first in line to grab the assets — not just the deposits of customers but their stocks and bonds. This is made possible by the Uniform Commercial Code, under which all assets held by brokers, banks and “central clearing parties” have been “dematerialized” into fungible pools and are held in “street name.”

Actions Against Mountain Valley Pipeline During Days Of Solidarity

Beginning on January 29, people across Turtle Island rose up to oppose and fight back against the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its funders, investors, contractors, and collaborators. Folks around the country took autonomous action, organized in their communities, and showed solidarity with pipeline resistance, as well as with comrades facing state repression in Atlanta, and with the people of Palestine.  In the days that followed, organizers stood in solidarity with MVP resistance from hundreds of miles away, rallying outside of the offices of EQT and PNC bank in Pittsburgh, outside of Washington Gas (WGL) in D.C., and outside of Bank of America in Charlotte, and Wells Fargo in San Francisco, Blacksburg, Richmond, and other locations.

Why Mainstream Economics Got Inflation Wrong

Austin - In his November 7, 2023 New York Times newsletter, the economist Paul Krugman asks a good, albeit belated, question: Why did so many economists get the inflation outlook wrong? After all, the near-consensus among mainstream economists in recent years was that inflation would persist – and even accelerate – and that this justified substantial interest-rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve. Yet the quasi-inflation of 2021-22 proved transitory. Krugman poses his question with impeccable diplomacy, professing “respect” for three authors of a September 2022 paper published by the Brookings Institution (which was then promoted by Harvard University’s Jason Furman) projecting that it would take at least two years of unemployment at 6.5% to bring inflation back to the Fed’s self-imposed 2% target.

More Banks To Fail? Not In North Dakota

U.S. banks are again in the crosshairs. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded five new middle-tier banks and put three others on negative outlook. This follows sweeping downgrades earlier in August by Moody’s, which cut credit ratings on 10 banks and placed four of the 15 largest U.S. banks on review for possible downgrade. As with the banks going into receivership earlier this year, concerns include interest rate risk due to unrealized losses from long-term securities. Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings, which questions the government’s ability to finance its nearly $33 trillion federal debt.

Protest: Federal Reserve Ignoring Systemic Climate Financial Risks

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City hosted its 45th annual Economic Policy Symposium titled “Structural Shifts in the Global Economy” in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, starting on Thursday, August 24, 2023. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell addressed the symposium on Friday and over 100 other central bankers, federal reserve officials, academics, media, financial organizations, international counterparts, and government regulators were also in attendance. One notable major topic has been omitted from the materials released so far: addressing systemic climate financial risk. Compared to global peers, Chair Powell and the Federal Reserve have been laggards in addressing systemic climate financial risks, putting workers, businesses, and the economy at risk.

Four-Fifths Of Board Members At Top Six US Banks Are Climate Conflicted

Four in five bank directors at the six largest banks in the U.S. have ties to polluting companies and organizations, including major fossil fuel companies, according to a new DeSmog analysis. The research raises fresh concerns about the extent of anti-environmental influence inside some of the nation’s most powerful boardrooms at a time when campaigners are pushing the banks to enact stronger environmental policies at their annual shareholder meetings. It reveals that 82 percent of board members at these six banks currently hold or have held positions with climate-conflicted organizations.

Environmental Racism And Corporate Colonialism Revealed At Canadian Bank

Thanks to Canadian BDS Coalition member, Human Rights for All,  for their solidarity  at the Royal Bank of Canada's Annual General Meeting (RBC AGM) on April 5, 2023, in Saskatoon. With vehicular access blocked and two snipers on the roof, at least 150 environmental and Indigenous  rights activists rallied in front of the Delta Bessborough Hotel in  Saskatoon where RBC was holding their AGM. They were there to protest against RBC’s putting  99% of their energy investments in fossil fuels. Since the Paris climate agreement was signed, RBC has provided over $270 billion to fossil fuel companies, with last year representing a 45 per cent increase in fossil fuel funding from the year before.

Canadian Bank RBC The Number One Financier Of Fossil Fuels

Released today, the 14th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report is the most comprehensive global analysis on fossil fuel banking. Endorsed by 624 organizations from 75 countries, it reveals the truth of banks’ commitments to the climate by examining their financing of the fossil fuel industry. For the first time since 2019, a Canadian bank is the #1 annual financier of fossil fuels rather than US bank JP Morgan Chase. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) showered fossil fuel projects with $42.1 billion dollars in 2022, including $4.8 billion for tar sands and $7.4 billion into fracking. Canadian banks are becoming the banks of last resort for fossil fuels, providing $862 billion to fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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