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New Campaign Targets Companies Profiting From Illegal Israeli Settlements in West Bank
"We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession and human suffering," said one peace advocate.
Sep 15, 2025
A collective of more than 80 different groups on Monday announced a new campaign aimed at companies that do business with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The campaign, called "Stop Trade With Settlements," is being sponsored by more than 80 civil society organizations, including Oxfam International, and it names multiple companies including Barclays Bank, Siemens, and Carrefour as firms that are benefiting from selling goods and services to the settlements.
In a statement introducing the campaign, Oxfam explained why "ending trade with settlements is a necessary step to uphold human rights, protect Palestinian livelihoods, stop Israel’s settlement expansion, and end the unlawful occupation" of the West Bank.
"Over the last four years, Israel has significantly accelerated its settlement activities in the West Bank," the organization said. "Most of these approvals were granted for settlements located 'deep into the West Bank,' further fragmenting Palestinian territory and imposing new movement restrictions on Palestinians."
"The revival of the ‘E1’ plan... is effectively cutting off Palestinian movement between the northern and southern West Bank," the group added, referring to the E1 settlement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on last week. The plan will "bury" the possibility of a Palestinian state by cutting East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.
Oxfam then walked through how these firms are profiting from doing business in the West Bank.
German travel conglomerate TUI, for example, offers a bus tour through the West Bank for tourists to meet with settlers who are illegally living on Palestinians' land.
Siemens, meanwhile, was found to have provided "equipment and services for settlement-linked transportation infrastructure including a rail deal worth over €1 billion."
The report singled out Barclays for providing $18.1 billion in loans to settlement-linked firms over a three-and-a-half-year period, which the report said made it "the third largest creditor of corporations complicit in settlement trade."
Anne-Marie Clements, engagement officer at the Catholic charity Justice and Peace Scotland, spoke of her recent trip to the occupied West Bank, where she met Palestinians who "told me of land confiscation, settler violence, home demolitions, military checkpoints and the denial of water: all daily realities of the occupation that make life unbearable."
Clements said the reality on the ground in the West Bank made it imperative for her organization to support the campaign.
"The Stop Trade With Settlements campaign shines a light on how the illegal settlements, an integral part of the occupation, are sustained through trade," she said. "Ending this trade is not just a political necessity but a moral imperative. We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession, and human suffering."
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XR Glues Shut Barclays Across UK for Financing 'Climate Breakdown'
"The inconvenience we've caused this morning is small in comparison to the catastrophic events already happening due to Barclays' financing of fossil fuels," said one campaigner.
Nov 27, 2023
"We have closed this bank today."
That's the opening line on an explanatory poster, plastered on dozens of Barclays branches across the United Kingdom on Monday.
"Barclays has been on the wrong side of history for centuries," the poster continues. "Financing the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid in South Africa, weapons, and fossil fuels. $190 billion in finance for fossil fuels since 2015. Time to change."
"Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they're making."
The posters were left overnight by activists with Extinction Rebellion (XR), sister organization Money Rebellion, and allied groups, who superglued the doors shut at nearly 50 branches—inspired by a 2020 Greenpeace action targeting the bank.
"We're responding to public attitudes and targeting the perpetrators of climate breakdown, not ordinary people, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused to staff and customers," said an XR campaigner in a statement. "The inconvenience we've caused this morning is small in comparison to the catastrophic events already happening due to Barclays' financing of fossil fuels."
The climate groups pointed to this year's annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which shows that Barclays has poured $190.58 billion into the fossil fuel industry since 2015, when world leaders finalized the Paris agreement. Parties to that deal aim to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, with an ultimate goal of limiting it to 1.5°C.
Already, "human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C," relative to preindustrial levels, according to a March Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
A United Nations analysis published last week ahead of the upcoming COP28 U.N. climate talks projects that currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100.
Responding to the Monday action, a Barclays spokesperson told ITV that "aligned to our ambition to be a net-zero bank by 2050, we believe we can make the greatest difference by working with our clients as they transition to a low-carbon business model, reducing their carbon-intensive activity whilst scaling low-carbon technologies, infrastructure, and capacity."
"We have set 2030 targets to reduce the emissions we finance in five high emitting sectors, including the energy sector, where we have achieved a 32% reduction since 2020," the spokesperson added. "In addition, to scale the needed technologies and infrastructure, we have provided £99 billion of green finance since 2018, and have a target to facilitate $1 trillion in sustainable and transition financing between 2023 and 2030."
Climate campaigners argue that such policies are far from enough, given that the bank continues to finance fossil fuel projects.
"Barclays are pumping billions into the fossil fuel industry, completely at odds with advice from the International Energy Agency, United Nations, and IPCC," said a Money Rebellion activist who took part in the action. "Barclays are choosing short-term profits over a livable future and a lot of us are sick of the measly progress they're making, as they hide behind their lies and greenwash."
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New 'Blame Wall Street' Campaign Launched as Climate Emergency Grips Planet
"These companies could stop the flow of money to fossil fuels today, but they are choosing greed instead," said organizers with the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition.
Sep 01, 2022
Hundreds of organizations announced plans on Thursday to launch a mass mobilization this fall aimed at holding accountable those that allow destructive fossil fuel extraction to continue, specifically the Wall Street banks that have poured more than $1 trillion into oil and gas projects in recent years.
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, which includes more than 200 climate action groups, called on people across the U.S. to join "Blame Wall Street" public actions that are already planned in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities where campaigners will "connect the dots between the extreme weather events harming communities and the corporations fueling the climate crisis."
"There are plenty of people to be angry at: fossil fuel companies, which exist to make massive profits off of poisoning our air, water, and planet," Alec Connon and Arielle Swernoff, organizers with Stop the Money Pipeline, wrote at Common Dreams Thursday. "Politicians, who are bought and sold by wealthy tycoons, and whose climate policy--years in the making--was still riddled with giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. And finally: Wall Street."
As the Rainforest Action Network showed in a report released earlier this year, since the Paris climate agreement was forged in 2015, JPMorgan Chase has invested $382 billion in fossil fuel projects. Citigroup is the second-largest funder of oil and gas extraction, pouring $285 billion into projects, and Wells Fargo follows close behind at $275 billion.
Bank of America, Barclays, TD, and Morgan Stanley are also part of what the report labeled the "Dirty Dozen" and are among the banks Stop the Money Pipeline will target with their "Blame Wall Street" campaign this fall.
Fossil fuel companies also rely on insurance to build their infrastructure, and BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the largest investors in oil and gas projects, Connon and Swernoff wrote.
"These companies could stop the flow of money to fossil fuels today, but they are choosing greed instead," they said. "When we look around at the devastation caused by heat, flooding, hurricanes, and climate disaster, and we think about who to blame, Wall Street should sit at the top of the list."
This fall, the Stop the Money Pipeline will welcome anyone concerned about the climate crisis, extreme weather like the monsoons that recently caused unprecedented flooding and killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, and the fossil fuel investments made by banks that millions of Americans rely on to join or organize public actions across the country.
"Wherever you live--and regardless of whether you're new to activism or have been organizing for years--we want to support you in organizing to hold the funders of climate chaos accountable," wrote Connon and Swernoff, noting that Stop the Money Pipeline will be offering training and 1:1 coaching for anyone new to organizing.
Although Pakistan is responsible for just 0.3% of greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth's atmosphere, they said, it is currently suffering a humanitarian disaster induced by the fossil fuel-driven heating of the planet.
Catastrophes like Pakistan's, Europe's historic drought, and the drying-up of China's rivers and lakes "are happening because of a political and economic system designed to make some (mostly white, mostly male) people exceptionally rich from extracting and burning fossil fuels, while the rest of the world is left to suffer," wrote Connon and Swernoff.
"It's time to get angry, take to the streets, and hold those responsible for the climate crisis responsible," they wrote.
The coalition is also planning to hold an organizing call on September 7 to explain how advocates can organize "Blame Wall Street" demonstrations in their own communities.
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Climate Activists Put 'All Eyes on BlackRock' With Protests Demanding Shareholder Action
"We're giving notice that we'll be watching to see if BlackRock will actually pour any water on the flames it has started. We're here because we can't fix our planet with promises, only action can do that."
Apr 18, 2021
As corporations around the world prepare for annual shareholder meetings, climate activists held a series of actions leading up to and throughout the weekend in cities around the world that aimed to put "all eyes on BlackRock," the world's largest money manager, with nearly $9 trillion in assets under management.
"At the moment, BlackRock is a major part of the problem," said Robin Wells, an English teacher and activist with Fossil Free London who joined the U.K. city's demonstration, in a statement from the global network BlackRock's Big Problem.
"Today we're giving notice that we'll be watching to see if BlackRock will actually pour any water on the flames it has started," Wells said. "We're here because we can't fix our planet with promises, only action can do that."
In addition to London, activists demonstrated at BlackRock offices in Boston, Dallas, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, and Zurich.
"CEO Larry Fink talks a big game on climate, but the company is the top investor in oil, gas, and coal," noted Patrick Houston of New York Communities for Change. "As the season of shareholder annual meetings looms, all eyes are on BlackRock."
As BlackRock's Big Problem details on a webpage about this year's shareholder season:
In BlackRock's 2021 Stewardship Expectations report, the asset manager finally acknowledged that voting against management and supporting shareholder proposals often leads to positive changes at companies. In January 2021, BlackRock expanded its voting criteria and announced that it will hold directors accountable when their companies fail to address climate change in their business plans. In March, both BlackRock and Vanguard joined the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a first move on climate for Vanguard.
While acknowledgments and commitments may mark a change in thinking within BlackRock and Vanguard, it is action that is needed to curb the climate crisis. So this shareholder season, as the world looks toward COP26, their default position must be to vote in favor of pro-climate shareholder resolutions and against corporate boards when a company doesn't have a clear climate transition plan.
The network is focused on eight specific votes. In the oil and gas sector, there will votes on resolutions for BP and Shell to set public targets consistent with the goals of the Paris agreement, and against ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Darren Woods as well as lead independent director Kenneth C. Frazier for failing to implement plans consistent with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5oC, the more ambitious Paris goal.
There are similar plans for financial services--votes on resolutions for Barclays and MUFG to set Paris-related targets and against Wells Fargo chairman Charles H. Noski for failing to implement plans consistent with the 1.5oC goal. There will also be a similar vote against Duke chair and CEO Lynn Good as well as independent lead director Michael G. Browning. Activists are also pushing for a resolution requesting Bunge issue a report about eliminating deforestation in its soy supply chain.
"At this point, voting with corporate management to maintain business as usual is an active choice against climate action," the network says. "If asset managers continue to choose not to vote for climate action this shareholder season, they will be actively working against progress, science, and the interests of their own clients and beneficiaries."
While protesters aimed to raise awareness about the upcoming votes, some also directed attention to the controversial Line 3 pipeline, which opponents have dubbed "a climate time bomb." The Canadian company Enbridge is trying to replace a corroding pipeline with a larger one that would carry oil from Alberta, through North Dakota and Minnesota, to Wisconsin. Construction on the project has been repeatedly halted in recent months by water protectors' direct actions in Minnesota.
"My heritage is of a people whose rights were violently violated. My future is of a planet whose climate is being devastatingly altered. BlackRock should wield its vast financial power to mitigate the climate crisis," declared 19-year-old climate justice activist Xiye Bastida of the Otomi-Toltec Nation. "It can start by divesting from Enbridge, the owner of the Line 3 pipeline, before moving to divest from all tar sands."
Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on why the federal government hasn't deemed BlackRock "too big to fail" and subjected the firm to stricter oversight. The senator said during a hearing that "it isn't just banks that pose a risk to the economy. In 2008, two investment companies, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, failed, triggering the 2008 crash."
The Biden administration faces mounting pressure to protect U.S. financial institutions and the economy from risks posed by the climate emergency as well as demands that the administration help end the flow of private finance from Wall Street to major polluters. Polling results released Monday show that a majority of U.S. voters support federal government action to prevent future climate-related economic crises.
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Activists Urging Barclays to 'Stop Funding the Climate Emergency' Shut Down Nearly 100 Branches Across UK
"It's time Barclays pulled the plug and backed away from funding fossil fuels for good," said a local Greenpeace campaigner.
Mar 01, 2020
In a coordinated action to pressure Barclays to stop financing climate destruction, Greenpeace activists on Monday morning shut down 97 of the British investment bank's branches across the United Kingdom.
"Barclays must stop funding the climate emergency; that's why we've taken action today," Morten Thaysen, climate finance campaigner at Greenpeace U.K., said in a statement. "From floods to bushfires and record heat in Antarctica, the impacts of this crisis are staring us in the face. Yet Barclays keeps pumping billions into fossil fuel companies at exactly the time we need to stop backing these polluting businesses."
"Banks are just as responsible for the climate emergency as the fossil fuel companies they fund, yet they're escaped scrutiny for years," Thaysen added. "We've shut down branches across the country to shine a spotlight on Barclays' role in bankrolling this emergency. It's time Barclays pulled the plug and backed away from funding fossil fuels for good."
Activists across the country disabled the doors at Barclays branches and plastered the buildings with photos of campaigners holding signs that declared: "Stop funding the climate emergency," "Climate criminals," and "Stop funding fossil fuels."
Greenpeace U.K.'s #BarclaysShutdown action was welcomed by fellow climate advocacy groups and activists who praised the group for fighting for a habitable planet:
According to the Rainforest Action Network's latest fossil fuel finance report card, published nearly a year ago, Barclays poured over $85 billion into coal, oil, and gas companies from 2016 to 2018, and was the sixth largest funder of the fossil fuel industry worldwide. Climate action campaigners and Barclays shareholders alike have urged the bank to phase out its support for dirty energy firms.
In a series of tweets Monday, Greenpeace U.K. showed the impacts of the human-caused climate crisis and pointed out Barclays' role in funding fossil fuel companies that significantly contribute to global heating:
In response to Monday's protests, a Barclays spokesperson told BBC News that "we recognize that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today, and are determined to do all we can to support the transition to a low carbon economy, while also ensuring that global energy needs continue to be met."
"Greenpeace has a view on these issues to which they are completely entitled, but we would ask that--in expressing that view--they stop short of behavior which targets our customers, and our colleagues, going about their lives in communities around the country," the bank spokesperson added.
Although some Barclays customers were reportedly frustrated with Greenpeace's action, some Twitter users who self-identified as bank customers turned to social media to express support for the group's decision to shut down bank branches, given the scale of the threat posed by the climate emergency.
"As an 'old dear' I am content for the minor inconvenience of temporarily losing access to a bank that invests in the destruction of my grandchildren's and their grandchildren's future. Well done, Greenpeace," tweeted Dianne Woodward, a scientist and educator.
Verity Pabla, founder of the music company I'm Not a Machine, directed her tweet at the bank, writing: "I'm a new Barclays customer, and I fully support this action by Greenpeace U.K. It's time to shape up your business with immediate effect. Stop funding fossil fuel companies."
The action also won support from Alan Watson Featherstone, an ecologist, nature photographer, and founder of the conservation charity Trees for Life, which aims to restore the Caledonian Forest in Scotland:
American author and activist Bill McKibben responded on Twitter to the Barclays action, highlighting upcoming protests to pressure the U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase, the biggest funder of fossil fuels, to divest from projects wrecking the planet. The actions planned for April 23 are part of the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign launched in January by multiple advocacy groups, including Greenpeace USA and 350.org, which McKibben co-founded.
JPMorgan is a top target of the campaign, which has also set its sights on asset managers and insurance companies. Although JPMorgan announced last week that the bank will stop funding certain fossil fuel extraction projects, McKibben confirmed that it will still "retain the title of the doomsday bank" and face demonstrations by climate activists next month.
This post has been updated to clarify that Barclays poured over $85 billion into fossil fuel firms between 2016 and 2018, according to the Rainforest Action Network.
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'Stop Funding Ecocide': Extinction Rebellion Protesters Target London Financial District
"The city of London is a preeminent nexus of power in the global system that is killing our world."
Oct 14, 2019
Climate activists with the global Extinction Rebellion movement blocked roads leading to London's financial district on Monday to call attention to the role big banks play in funding fossil fuel projects and exacerbating the planetary crisis.
Protesters also rallied outside the Bank of England to demand that it "stop funding ecocide" and "invest in the future."
"The city of London is a preeminent nexus of power in the global system that is killing our world," Carolina Rosa, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (XR), said in a statement. "It is the epicenter of 'business as usual,' both in the U.K. and globally. If there is to be any hope for the future it cannot continue to operate in its present form."
Emily Grossman, an expert in molecular biology who took part in Monday's protest, slammed financial institutions for fueling the climate crisis by pursuing "huge investments" in the fossil fuel industry as scientists warn carbon emissions must be cut immediately to avoid global catastrophe.
The Guardian reported over the weekend that BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street--the world's largest asset managers--"have built a combined $300 billion fossil fuel investment portfolio using money from people's private savings and pension contributions."
"They are using our own money--in terms of pensions and investments--to drive us all towards climate catastrophe," said Grossman. "They are threatening the lives of our children and grandchildren for the sake of their profits."
Protesters targeted Blackrock's London offices on Monday:
The London Metropolitan Police announced early Monday that there have been more than 1,300 arrests in the city since XR's two weeks of global nonviolent action began last week. The movement is demanding that political and corporate leaders acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis and take action to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman, who joined dozens of others in the streets outside the Bank of England, said "if it takes an arrest to try to find ways of helping to galvanize public opinion, then it is certainly worth being arrested."
Newman was arrested and carried away by London police moments later:
Andrew Medhurst, a former investment banker who is now a full-time climate activist, told The Guardian that the financial sector is "essentially leading us to destruction" by continuing to fund fossil fuel development.
"We have no more time left in terms of taking action," said Medhurst. "We haven't got 12 years. We should have started yesterday. We have to decarbonize our economies, so for the banks to be lending money to fossil fuel companies--it's just barmy. It doesn't make sense."
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Greenpeace Slathers Barclay's London Headquarters With Faux Tar Sands Spill
"Barclays have been ignoring the damage their dirty funding decisions are doing to the world."
Jul 19, 2018
Greenpeace U.K. activists staged a protest at Barclays' Canary Wharf headquarters in London on Thursday to denounce the multinational bank's investments in Canadian tar sands pipelines--hanging massive mock-oil droplets from the logo on the building's awning, blaring recorded messages through a loudspeaker in the lobby, and passing out flyers to customers, urging them to rethink where they put their money.
"Barclays have been ignoring the damage their dirty funding decisions are doing to the world, and to Indigenous communities in North America, so we've brought a little taste of what they're trying to ignore right to their doorstep."
--Hannah Martin, Greenpeace U.K."Tar sands are a climate disaster," explained Greenpeace U.K. oil campaigner Hannah Martin. They "produce more than twice the carbon of an average barrel of oil, and a tar sands oil spill is even worse than a normal crude oil spill--the oil sinks in water, making it almost impossible to clean up."
"Barclays have been ignoring the damage their dirty funding decisions are doing to the world, and to Indigenous communities in North America, so we've brought a little taste of what they're trying to ignore right to their doorstep," declared Martin. "We need to hold them to account for the damage they're causing."
Greenpeace U.K. live-streamed the protest on Facebook:
Ocean Hyland, from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in Canada's British Columbia province, traveled to London to join the action and highlight the threat that oil pipelines pose to communities like hers.
Indigenous people have been key opponents of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently decided to take over from Kinder Morgan after the Houston-based firm halted construction due to protests. Activists and scientists have warned that the project threatens marine life in the area, including the inlet from which Hyland's people took their name and continue to acquire much of their food.
"Industrialization poisoned our home, and we spent 40 years repairing that damage, until finally, two years ago, we were able to safely eat clams harvested from the inlet again," Hyland said. "A tar sands pipeline will increase oil tanker traffic in the inlet seven-fold, and put our inlet and all of our work at risk. I urge Barclays to reconsider its involvement in this project, and avoid funding the further destruction of my people and the planet."
Greenpeace U.K. is also circulating a petition to urge Barclays to withdraw their financial support of tar sands projects.
While customers turned to Twitter on Thursday to pressure Barclays to stop investing in dirty energy--threatening to cut their credit cards and take their business elsewhere unless the bank changes course--the company's response to the protest suggested that the mounting public outrage could be having an impact.
A Barclays spokesperson said: "We take seriously our societal and environmental obligations and are in dialogue with Greenpeace on this issue. We will continue to carefully consider our approach, taking into consideration the views of all relevant stakeholders, as well as the world's energy needs."
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Biggest Banks Fueling Climate Disaster With Billions Poured Into 'Extreme Fossil Fuels'
"Our planet just can't take it."
Jun 21, 2017
Threatening a climate-stable planet, the world's biggest banks are continuing business-as-usual by continuing to provide funding for "extreme fossil fuels."
So finds the latest Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card--produced by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Sierra Club, and Oil Change International--which defines the "extreme" sources as tar sands, Arctic oil, ultra-deepwater oil, coal mining, coal power, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.
As RAN said Wednesday in an email to supporters: "To keep the planet under 1.5 degrees of global warming and stop human rights violations, banks *must* stop financing extreme fossil fuels. Our planet just can't take it."
The "Banking on Climate Change" report--released in collaboration with over two dozen organizations including Bold Alliance, SumOfUs, West Coast Environmental Law, and Indigenous Climate Action--looks at 37 major banks' lending and underwriting transactions, and gives them A-through-F grade based on their policies. It also gives a brief look at banks' human rights failures.
Despite its worrying findings, there is a bit of good news the report. From 2015 to 2016, the analysis found, the amount the banks poured into extreme fossil fuels dropped 22 percent, from $111 billion down to $87 billion. But the report cautions that for the sake of the planet, this must not be "just a temporary decline."
Further qualifying the good news, the report adds:
the $290 billion of direct and indirect financing for extreme fossil fuels over the last three years represents new investment in the exact subsectors whose expansion is most at odds with reaching climate targets, respecting human rights, and preserving ecosystems.
Another startling finding noted by the report:
12 of the 37 banks increased their financing to the top extreme fossil fuel companies from 2015 to 2016, after the Paris Agreement was inked: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, China Construction Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Mizuho Financial Group, Santander, Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), UBS, and UniCredit.
A case study laid out in the report is TransCanada's 1,179-mile Keystone XL pipeline (KXL), which would bring tar sands crude from the Canadian province of Alberta to Nebraska and link to an existing network of pipelines. While the pipeline is back, the report says, "so is the people power that fought to stop it the first time."
And given "the heated criticism banks received for financing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), any banks associated with KXL or TransCanada face even greater reputational risk than before." The report goes on:
It is yet to be determined whether TransCanada will seek project-specific financing to construct KXL. In the absence of direct project finance, it is the 21 banks on TransCanada's revolving credit facilities that are, effectively, the funders of Keystone XL. Of the banks analyzed in this report, Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, Canadian and Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Citi, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Mizuho, RBC, Scotiabank, SMFG, TD, and Wells Fargo all participate in multi-billion dollar lines of credit to TransCanada.
JP Morgan Chase earned the dubious distinction of being the biggest Wall Street funder of extreme fossil fuels.
"In 2016 alone they poured $6.9 billion into the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet," said Lindsey Allen, RAN's executive director. "On Wall Street they are number one in tar sands oil, Arctic oil, ultra-deepwater oil, coal power, and LNG export. Even in this bellwether year when overall funding has declined, Chase is funneling more and more cash into extreme fossil fuels. For a company that issues statements in favor of the Paris Climate Accord, they are failing to meet their publicly stated ambitions."
The report comes amid increasing calls to "keep it in the ground," alongside new state- and city-led efforts to move forward on climate action, and amid growing evidence that fossil fuel investments make poor economic sense.
"There's no question that funding climate change is a deadly investment strategy," stated Jenny Marienau, 350.org's U.S. campaigns director. "Yet banks around the world are funneling billions of dollars into the fossil fuel projects leading us closer to catastrophic warming every day."
"Movements like the Indigenous-led effort to Defund DAPL are rightfully pressuring banks to divest from infrastructure like the Dakota Access pipeline that puts profits before human rights and a livable future," Marienau said. "It's up to us to resist these disastrous projects, push back on these fatal investments, and build the renewable energy solutions we need."
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Following Barclays' Scandal, Stiglitz says 'Send Bankers to Jail'
Without threat of prosecution, says Nobel economist, expect little to change
Jul 02, 2012
Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz has called recent revelations that Barclays and other large banks colluded to defraud their costumers by artificially leveraging international interest rates a "textbook illustration" of how banks use privileged information and lax oversight to reap rewards for themselves while savaging the wider societies in which they operate.
In an interview with The Independent on Monday, Stiglitz argued (with Barclay's as just the most recent example) that bankers -- without threat of prosecution or jail time -- would continue to use their elevated status to exploit weak regulations, consolidate power, and avoid accountability.
The scandal at Barclays claimed the resignation on Sunday of Chairman Marcus Agius after traders at the bank admitted manipulating Libor, a baseline interest rate used by banks to set lending costs around the world and which acts as the benchmark, according to an estimate by Reuters, on $350 trillion in derivatives and other financial products.
Stiglitz argues, in paraphrase by interviewer Ben Chu, "that breaking the economic and political power that has been amassed by the financial sector in recent decades, especially in the US and the UK, is essential if we are to build a more just and prosperous society. The first step, he says, is sending some bankers to jail."
The banks, said Stiglitz in the interview, "create the non-transparent market" by dominating the legislative process that is suppose to control it. "For every meeting that the government has with [bankers], it [should] have to have a meeting with the labor groups and the representatives of civil society," he said. "The problem today is that there's not equality of access."
And it's not just the banks, Stiglitz says. "Everybody knew that there was this scope for Libor manipulation. Many economists couldn't believe that it wasn't going on. We're focusing on the bankers but at the micro economic level this goes on all the time. I was party to a suit in the state of Alaska. Oil companies were supposed to pay the state royalties - 60 per cent of the net price, the price of oil net of their transportation costs. They manipulated the transportation costs. They had to pay the state of Alaska $1bn. Stealing a penny a time. For every gallon, they stole a penny, or a fraction of a penny. This is in the nature Adam Smith's invisible hand when there is a lack of transparency."
In a related analysis, Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith, wonders why the Barclays' Libor scandal caused such justifiable outrage in the UK, but generated barely a murmor in the US. And separately, Reuters tracks developments in the Barclays' case as embattled CEO Bob Diamond fends off criticism after Agius' departure.
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'Monopoly': Calling the Global Financial Sector What It Is
Justice demands that we call things what they are--indeed, we must name the system to change it.
Jun 28, 2012
New York Times columnists Protess and Scott report that Barclays Bank is paying some US$450 million to regulators in the US and UK to "resolve accusations" surrounding its manipulation of a key interest rate, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor), during the first years of the ongoing global financial crisis. According to the article, the Libor rate is used as a benchmark rate to price some US$350 trillion in financial products worldwide each year, from credit cards to derivatives and student loans.
The Financial Times reports that the investigation now spans 12 regulators--from the US to Europe and Japan--and 20 banks, including the multinational giants JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS and Deutsche Bank. The general idea is that the big banks--so far only Barclays has admitted wrongdoing--misreported the rates at which they borrowed from other banks, influencing the LIBOR rate so as to profit the banks. Barclays has also admitted to allowing consultations between various bank departments, and between itself and other banks, before reporting its rates to Libor, an illicit practice.
In most accounts, blame for such unsavory practices are spread around from bank managers and employees seeking higher profits and lower losses, to regulators who were asleep at the wheel, to the secretive and opaque process by which the Libor rate is set. Yet, behind the regulators and the greedy bankers, lies the 'm' word that no one dares utter in the business presses--monopoly. The global financial system is increasingly run by a few big firms operating in a highly uncompetitive market place and wielding enormous power, often behind a veil of secrecy, (intentional) regulatory blindness, and technical complexity.
As any introductory economic textbook shows, imperfectly competitive marketplaces (e.g. monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly and oligopsony) are defined by the ability of a few firms, or only one firm, to manipulate prices and other exchange terms. As markets concentrate, and free competition is replaced by collusion and superprofits, firms gain the market power to influence market rules and prices in their own interest. Indeed, any college freshman in an traditional economics department could foresee that growing concentration in global credit markets would result in price distortions, to the detriment of consumers and other less powerful actors. And, some might also be able to cite a few examples of the manner in which market power confers political power, another dangerous dimension of monopolistic market structures frequently noted in the Marxist tradition, among others (think, say, of Goldman Sach's ability to staff the US Treasury and Federal Reserve).
Reintroducing the concept of monopoly into public discourse is critical for seeing patterns of injustice in the global economy, continuities that are otherwise obscured by national, geographic, partisan and sectoral distinctions. And not just in the financial context. The word "monopoly" helps to understand why it is that Greek citizens suffer austerity even as financial institutions get rescue packages, just as it helps us to understand how it is that Starbucks could rake in record profits from its coffee sales even as world prices fell to record lows during 1998-2002. The word "monopoly" helps us to see why our pigs and cattle are raised in confinement with antibiotics and without any trace of humanity, just as it helps us to see why small farmers in India are killing themselves by the tens of thousands. The word "monopoly" untangles the Mexican tortilla crisis, just as it unravels the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadeq in Iran. The word "monopoly" helps us to understand why it is that Presidents Bush and Obama have such a similar economic agenda, despite their playing for two different political teams. And, just today, the word "monopoly" helped me to understand how it is that it is illegal for me to collect rainwater in my backyard here in Denver.
Justice demands that we call things what they are--indeed, we must name the system to change it. In this context, the "m" word allows clarity of thought and analysis in the face of often overwhelming economic complexity. The "m" word allows us to strip the economy of its competitive veil, allows us to de-robe the trusts and combines of the 21st century. The "m" word prevents us from lapsing into the view that all of these injustices--from antibiotic resistance to farmer suicide to coup d'etat--must be treated separately by different movements and different peoples. The "m" word allows us to see the architecture of the global economy for what it is--a playground for the new robber barons, a collection of corporate fiefdoms, an integrated system of monopolies, with all of the typical injustices that such arrangements usher forth.
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