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Climate Denier Lee Raymond Left the World Hotter Than He Found It
I don’t believe a loving God consigns people to eternal damnation. But I do believe that Raymond, Exxon, and Chase have helped send the rest of us to a kind of hell.
Jun 12, 2026
Here’s how Lee Raymond’s hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle, remembered him Thursday morning.
The Texas paper was more direct, and more accurate, than anyone else covering the story. The Times obit gave top billing to the fact that he led the acquisition of Mobil and “cut costs relentlessly;” the Wall Street Journal waited till paragraph six to note that he was “openly skeptical” of climate science (much like The Wall Street Journal). But the Chron had it right—when people think back in a hundred years or a thousand or ten thousand, the one thing worth remembering about him will be the crucial role he played in holding back action on climate change.
I’m going to recount the lowlights of the story here, and add one that gets very little notice in the obituaries, but that ties directly to the ongoing crisis.
Raymond was a research engineer who spent his whole career at what was then the world’s largest company. He joined its board in 1984, already a leading candidate for CEO, which means he was near the top during the 1980s, the period when (as we now know thanks to great investigative reporting) the company’s scientists correctly identified the dangers of global warming and linked them directly to Exxon’s products. That research, as Inside Climate News reported in 2015,
laid the groundwork for a 1982 corporate primer on carbon dioxide and climate change prepared by its environmental affairs office. Marked “not to be distributed externally,” it contained information that “has been given wide circulation to Exxon management.” In it, the company recognized, despite the many lingering unknowns, that heading off global warming “would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”
Unless that happened, “there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered,” the primer said, citing independent experts. “Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.”
This was, of course, the same decade when Jim Hansen was carrying out his groundbreaking research at NASA (and I was writing The End of Nature). Exxon, as it turns out, was on precisely the same wavelength. Here’s, to me, one of the great historical what-ifs: Imagine that, on the night that Hansen made his remarks to Congress, an Exxon exec like Raymond had gone on the evening news and told Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, or Peter Jennings that “our research shows pretty much the same thing.” No one would have accused Exxon of climate alarmism; instead, we would have gotten to work as a civilization.
Instead, they chose denial. And it was Raymond who played a lead role, as Exxon helped form the Global Climate Coalition, first of the obfuscation fronts. He became the spokesman for anti-science in many ways: In 1997, as the world approached the first global climate talks in Kyoto, he gave what may be a speech second only in importance to Hansen’s original testimony. Speaking in Beijing to the Worl Petroleum Congress, he contended that the world was cooling, that there was no way to know if carbon dioxide was to blame, and that in any event “it is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now.”
These, of course, were exactly the things Exxon’s scientists had told them were not true. Indeed, they’d been explicitly warned that
man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.
And Exxon had believed its scientists. As a 2015 Los Angeles Times report made clear, they’d begun building drilling rigs higher to counteract rising sea levels, and plotting out what parts of the Arctic might be prime for oil drilling once they’d helped melt the ice.
Exxon, more than any single force on Earth, made sure that the planet didn’t address climate change while it had time. Given what it knew in the 1980s Exxon could have had a head start on building and owning the solutions like sun and wind. But, as one of Raymond’s successors said two years ago, that didn’t happen because “we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders” with clean energy. And he was right. You can make money putting up solar panels, but you can’t make Exxon money, because the sun delivers energy for free. It doesn’t offer the same scope for greed.
And greed was the word here. For his role in helping wreck the Earth’s climate system, Exxon paid him $686 million, or $144,573 a day, during his tenure as CEO. His retirement package was $400 million.
And even when he finally left Exxon in 2005 he continued on doing damage—this is the often overlooked part of his story. He was the lead independent director at JP Morgan Chase, which had been the Exxon house bank, and which, as I chronicled for Rolling Stone in 2020, became the fossil fuel industry’s biggest lender—the “doomsday bank.”
Many of us ginned up a campaign to get him off that board (along with Rev. Lennox Yearwood and other protesters, and with Jane Fonda looking in through the glass windows, I was arrested at a DC Chase branch to help kick off that fight in 2020). It was eventually successful—that summer he was demoted as lead director, and left the board in December.
But Raymond’s legacy lives on. Just as Exxon has gone on pumping out oil (and climate nonsense), Chase has kept pumping out money. As the brand new edition of the Banking on Climate Chaos report pointed out last week, Chase remains the No. 1 financier of fossil fuels around the world, besting Mitsubishi, Citigroup, and Bank of America; since 2021 they’ve pumped a quarter-trillion dollars into this effort. Asked by The Guardian for a comment, a Chase spokesman said, “As one of the world’s largest financiers of energy, we support the full range of energy solutions and technologies, with a focus on reliability, affordability, security, and long-term resilience.” That kind of bland corporate-speak hides an almost unimaginable multitude of sins.
Like a great many Christians, I don’t believe a loving God consigns people to eternal damnation. But I do believe that Lee Raymond, Exxon, and Chase have helped send the rest of us to a kind of hell. As Jeff Masters just reported:
The world recorded its highest burned area for any January-May during the past 15 years, with more than 150 million hectares burned globally—22% higher than the previous high set in 2020 and about double the recent average for this period. In the US, the burned area so far in 2026 has been the highest for at least the past 10 years—about double the 10-year average—according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
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Voluntary Pledges 'Aren’t Working,' Report Shows as Big Banks Continue to Sow Climate Chaos
"Banks keep telling us they’re committed to climate. Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules—not promises.”
Jun 09, 2026
Calls for an end to oil, gas, and coal extraction grew louder in 2025 as the impact of fossil-fueled planetary heating was starkly illustrated by devastating wildfires across the Los Angeles area, deadly flash floods in Texas, a European heatwave that was blamed for the deaths of more than 24,000 people, and cyclones and floods that killed thousands.
But as climate action groups demanded that governments and financial institutions end support for fossil fuel projects and companies last year, according to a report released Monday by several organizations, the world's largest banks only committed more financing to projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) "boom" in the Philippines, and fracking in the Permian Basin.
Last year, according to Banking on Climate Chaos—released by groups including the Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and Oil Change International—the world's largest financial institutions committed $906 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies, representing an 8% increase over funding the previous year.
The groups emphasized that the banks financed pollution-causing oil, gas, and coal projects even as they made "voluntary commitments" to “aligning their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050," as a now-defunct United Nations-backed scheme called the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) pledged.
More than a decade after countries agreed to the Paris climate accord and pledged to take action in a push to avert planetary heating over 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, the report notes, "banks maintain and are expected to uphold climate policies independent of the NZBA."
However, it continues, "the collapse of the NZBA—culminating in its cessation of operations in October 2025—freed banks to further unwind from climate targets and other elements of their climate strategies."
"Notably, throughout 2025 and the first half of 2026, banks have further weakened their commitments to uphold 1.5˚C temperature rise limits, widened loopholes, and undercut sector policies for coal, oil, and gas energy or power supply primarily by removing or diluting exclusion criteria and commitments. Most policy changes in the past year were downgrades of existing policies rather than improvements," reads the report.
"Voluntary commitments aren’t working. No major oil and gas company is doing anything even close to what is needed to hold global heating to 1.5°C, and voluntary banking sector pledges like the Net Zero Banking Alliance aren’t cutting their pipeline of cash."
Diogo Silva, campaign lead for BankTrack and a co-author of the report, said: "Banks keep telling us they’re committed to climate. Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules—not promises.”
Banking on Climate Chaos highlights the banks that spent the most money investing in fossil fuel projects, with JPMorgan Chase named the leading financier of oil, coal, and gas. The Wall Street firm spent $58 billion in 2025, the same year it also "weakened" its own climate policy.
"Of the 15 North American banks in scope, 12 now have no meaningful fossil fuel commitments," said Rainforest Action network. "JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs abandoned their coal and Arctic exclusions entirely, converting them into case-by-case due diligence standards."
JPMorgan Chase is one of three US banks listed in the top five fossil fuel backers; Bank of America financed the second-largest amount of pollution-causing projects at $47 billion, while Citigroup poured more than $45 billion into fossil fuels. Two Japanese institutions, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Mizuho Financial, were also in the top five.
With President Donald Trump taking executive action last year aimed at pressuring companies to back fossil fuel interests and "disregard social or environmental considerations," the report notes, US banks' share of all global fossil fuel financing increased to 32%, representing "the single largest source of fossil capital in the world." In 2021, US banks provided 28% of fossil fuel investment.
Trump has also aggressively pushed for more coal production since taking office for his second term in January 2025, and financing for coal mining expansion surged 77% in 2025, to $84 billion. Funding for coal power also grew by 40%, with companies pouring $81 billion into coal-fired plants.
Even when asked about the report's findings, top banks pointed to their own voluntary commitments to finance renewable energy projects and "achieve net zero financed emissions by 2050," as a spokesperson for Citigroup said to The Guardian.
The spokesperson said the bank "supports clients in the low‑carbon transition while recognizing the real need for secure, affordable and reliable energy today. We are committed to... advancing our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal, with a focus on balancing the transition with global energy resilience”.
David Tong, global industry campaign manager for Oil Change International and a co-author of the report, warned that "every dollar of finance for oil and gas helps an industry of war profiteers squeeze out short-term profits, further trapping communities into paying higher fossil fuel energy bills, fueling war and conflict, and burning all our futures."
"Voluntary commitments aren’t working. No major oil and gas company is doing anything even close to what is needed to hold global heating to 1.5°C, and voluntary banking sector pledges like the Net Zero Banking Alliance aren’t cutting their pipeline of cash," he said. "Instead, banks have injected over staggering $900 billion into fossil fuel financing in 2025 alone. Governments must step in and take urgent action to hold financial institutions and fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis.”
Since the Paris climate agreement, the report says, banks have poured a staggering $8.7 trillion into the fossil fuel industry, with the "Dirty Dozen," as the authors call the 12 largest fossil fuel financial backers, providing nearly 40% of all investment for coal, oil, and gas extraction.
The report makes demands of banks, calling on them to "exclude all finance for fossil fuel expansion immediately" and "require robust, 1.5°C-aligned transition plans from all existing fossil fuel clients"—but emphasizes that governments must compel financial institutions to end financing for oil, gas, and coal.
"After two consecutive years of fossil fuel finance increases by global banks—especially the increase in fossil fuel expansion finance and the continued backtracking from banks on their climate pledges—it is clear that the banking sector will not voluntarily take the necessary steps to transition out of fossil fuel finance at the pace and scale needed for the world to deliver on the Paris Agreement goals," reads the report.
Instead, it says, governments must mandate transition planning by banks, private equity holders, insurers, and other companies; make polluters pay for climate damages; ensure public finance institutions are subject to transparent reporting and legal accountability to international standards, and rapidly wind down supply-side fossil fuel subsidies, tax exemptions, subsidies, guarantees or other public assistance for new oil, gas, and coal projects.
"A decade after Paris, just twelve banks now drive more than a third of the world’s fossil fuel financing—proof that this is no longer a problem of markets, but of a small set of decision-makers making active choices," said Niko Lusiani, research director for Rainforest Action Network. "They are choosing to lock in an energy system that hands record profits to a few fossil firms while passing the costs onto the three of every four people on Earth who depend on imported fuel."
"The good news is that what a handful of banks built," said Lusiani, "governments and people worldwide have the power to change.”
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'Absolutely Massive' Price Shocks Coming as Trump's Iran War Drives Up Gas, Diesel Prices
"What should really terrify Republicans is... the futures price on wholesale gasoline," said economist Paul Krugman.
Mar 04, 2026
President Donald Trump's unprovoked attack on Iran has sent oil prices surging, and it's already hurting Americans at the gas pump.
Petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan reported on Wednesday that the average US price for diesel has hit $4 per gallon, the highest it's been since April 2024.
De Haan also projected that the price of diesel would keep rising in the coming days before eventually reaching a price in the range of $4.25 to $4.45 per gallon.
The average price of gasoline is now approaching $3.20 per gallon, De Haan reported, and is projected to rise to at least $3.30 per gallon in the coming days. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, average US gas prices haven't been that high since September 2024.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Wednesday flagged data showing that the price of Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending (RBOB) gasoline futures contracts has been going through the roof since the start of the Iran war.
"What should really terrify Republicans is RBOB—the futures price on wholesale gasoline," Krugman commented. "This is up 75 cents a gallon since its low earlier this year."
According to a Wednesday report at Market Watch, researchers at the investment bank Goldman Sachs this week raised their price forecast for Brent crude oil for the second quarter of 2026 to $76 per barrel, an increase of $10.
What's more, Market Watch noted, Goldman is projecting that the price of Brent crude could hit $100 per barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for the next five weeks due to the war.
Goldman isn't the only investment bank projecting sky-high oil prices if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for a prolonged period, as JPMorgan Chase earlier this week projected that the price of Brent crude could top $120 if the Iran conflict drags on, according to a Monday report from Market Watch.
Robert Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Global Economy and Development program, said in an interview with Seeking Alpha that global investors at the moment seem to be underestimating the economic risks of a prolonged conflict with Iran, citing "a weird tendency in markets to downplay unexpected shocks when they happen.”
However, Brooks told Seeking Alpha that what's happening with the global oil market right now "is absolutely massive" and should not be ignored.
Trump so far has not outlined any end game for the war he started, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday boasted that the Trump administration was "playing for keeps" by delivering "death and destruction from the sky all day" on Iran.
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Raskin Demands Bank Records in Probe of $1.5 Billion in 'Suspicious' Transactions Tied to Epstein
"Will your bank choose to be part of the cover-up for this massive, international sex trafficking ring that victimized more than 1,000 women and girls?"
Oct 09, 2025
US House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin on Wednesday sent letters to four major banks demanding records related to more than $1.5 billion in "suspicious" financial transactions tied to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring.
"Can Bank of America help Congress understand how Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their co-conspirators were able to use your bank and others to conduct more than $1.5 billion in suspicious financial transactions to operate their international sex trafficking ring for years without ever being caught?" Raskin (D-Md.) wrote to the bank's CEO, Brian Moynihan.
The congressman began his letters to Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robin Vince, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the same way.
Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while facing federal charges for sex trafficking. His death was ruled a suicide, but that has been met with deep skepticism. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal sentence for her related crimes.
The US Department of Justice has refused to release all of its files on Epstein, heightening public, media, and congressional attention on his friendship with President Donald Trump in the 1990s until their alleged falling out in the early 2000s.
"In September, at a hearing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel, it became clear that the FBI has failed to 'follow the money' with regard to more than $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring," Raskin wrote Wednesday.
"In light of this startling information, House Judiciary Committee Democrats moved to subpoena financial records related to Jeffrey Epstein from these four banks, but Republicans, with the exception of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), blocked these efforts," he explained, urging the institutions to willingly work with the panel.
"For over 15 years, JPMorgan turned a blind eye to evidence of Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking."
Under the Bank Secrecy Act, institutions must implement anti-money laundering policies, which include requiring compliance officers, often in consultation with executives, to file a suspicious activity report (SAR) within 60 days of noticing an activity that raises a red flag, "so federal authorities can be alerted to the potential criminal activity and investigate," the letters stress.
"Despite the public nature of Mr. Epstein's crimes, and the hundreds of millions of his funds flowing through your bank, it appears Bank of America filed only two significantly delayed SARs relating to his conduct—covering $170 million in transactions between Mr. Epstein and billionaire investor Leon Black," Raskin wrote to Moynihan.
The letter to Vince says that "while reports indicate that you filed SARs covering $378 million in payments to and from Mr. Epstein's accounts, these SARs were reportedly filed years after Mr. Epstein's death, well beyond when was statutorily required and when the opportunity to intervene and prevent his conduct had passed."
Raskin's letter to Dimon is particularly scathing, stating: "For over 15 years, JPMorgan turned a blind eye to evidence of Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking. Senior executives at your bank helped Mr. Epstein open 134 accounts and processed over $1 billion in transactions for Mr. Epstein, including after his 2008 conviction for soliciting minors."
"Mr. Epstein had an extensive pattern of suspicious transactions with JPMorgan, including a $175,000 cash withdrawal in 2003 that was used to pay child victims, a series of enormous cash withdrawals totaling more than $1.7 million in 2004 and 2005, and a slew of requests for credit cards and bank accounts for teenagers and young women," he detailed.
Raskin continued:
Despite the flagrant nature of Mr. Epstein’s activities, JPMorgan did not file a single SAR during that time It was only after Mr. Epstein's death that JPMorgan retroactively conducted a review of Mr. Epstein's transactions and filed its first SARs, covering a staggering 4,700 transactions totaling $1.1 billion. Many of these SARs were filed over a decade later than statutorily required.
Documents further show that Mr. Epstein repeatedly communicated with the chief executive of the investment bank at JPMorgan, who alerted Mr. Epstein to the bank's sensitivity about his constant cash withdrawals, and offered him the opportunity to alter his tactics to avoid detection. The JPMorgan executive also repeatedly intervened to ensure that JPMorgan's compliance functions would not interfere with Mr. Epstein's activities. Even more disturbing, in 2010, after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to engaging in sex with a minor, the same JPMorgan executive visited Mr. Epstein's properties in New Mexico, New York, and the Caribbean.
In his letter to Sewing, Raskin pointed out that "in 2013, Mr. Epstein moved his financial accounts from JPMorgan to Deutsche Bank."
"Despite news reports indicating Mr. Epstein's serious crimes, Deutsche Bank appeared focused on the potential profitability of its relationship," he wrote. "Deutsche Bank memos advocating opening an account for Mr. Epstein emphasized how lucrative his business would be."
The congressman accused Deutsche Bank of failing to report a "stream of red flags," called out compliance officers for accepting Epstein and his lawyers' "farfetched answers that these transfers were for 'tuition' or 'rent' for Mr. Epstein's 'friends,'" and noted that his attorney "made 100 cash withdrawals totaling over $800,000 in four years, often in amounts just below the $10,000 federal reporting threshold."
"So, Mr. Sewing, we ask: Is Deutsche Bank willing to put its past behind it and help reveal the truth about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their co-conspirators? Or will your bank choose to be part of the cover-up for this massive, international sex trafficking ring that victimized more than 1,000 women and girls?" he inquired, asking the same questions of the other CEOs.
Raskin also provided each bank with a list of specific requests for documents and information to send to the panel by October 22.
JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank have each paid hundreds of millions of dollars for claims related to Epstein. Asked about Raskin's letter, Deutsche Bank said in a statement to CNBC that it "takes its legal obligations seriously, including appropriately responding to authorized investigations and proceedings."
Bank of America and BNY Mellon did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment, while JPMorgan declined to comment.
The letters come as the federal government is shut down and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has held off on swearing in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the key 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that would require the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Johnson claimed earlier this week that her position on the matter was not the reason for the delay, but many Democrats in Congress and other critics are not buying that.
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Banking on Climate Chaos Report Shows 'Tremendous' Financing Surge
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," said one Native American environmental activist.
Jun 17, 2025
The 16th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which was released Tuesday, found that dozens of the world's biggest banks committed $869 billion to firms engaged in fossil fuels in 2024—a "tremendous" increase from the overall fossil fuel financing that was recorded the year prior, according to the authors of the study.
The report comes a few months after the World Meteorological Organization announced a new milestone in the climate crisis: Not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years was also individually the 10 warmest on record.
The new report analyzed the globe's 65 largest banks by assets according to S&P Global's annual rankings and was authored by several climate-focused groups, including Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Sierra Club, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and others.
The report has been endorsed by hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries, according to a statement from RAN, and all banks in the report were given the opportunity to review the financing attributed to them prior to the report's release.
Big picture, the report shows that Wall Street investment banks and other financial institutions are "complicit in the climate crisis," according to Tom BK Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and study co-author.
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," Goldtooth added.
The bank financing compiled in the report includes things such as the role banks play in facilitating bond issuances or their lending of money, according to the methodology section. Banks play a crucial role in enabling fossil fuel production because, as senior research strategist at RAN Caleb Schwarz explained, fossil fuel companies are quite rich but they don't have enough capital to finance their projects solely on their own.
Fossil fuel financing had been in on the decline between 2021 and 2023, dropping by $215 billion during that time period to $707 billion—meaning the rise in 2024 is a turnaround of over $162 billion.
"This growth in fossil fuel finance is troubling because new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in more decades of fossil fuel dependence," according to the report. "While various macroeconomic and political factors likely influenced specific decisions, at the end of the day, what matters is the outcome: Banks poured even more money into the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, despite the clear societal need for them to do the opposite."
Other topline findings include that the 65 banks featured in the report have committed $7.9 trillion in fossil fuel financing since 2016, and over two-thirds of the banks upped their fossil fuel financing between 2023 and 2024.
The world's biggest offender when it comes to fossil fuel financing in 2024 was JPMorgan Chase, which tallied $53.5 billion in fossil fuel financing, per the report. Bank of America came in second place.
"This should be a wake-up call to national governments and regional supervisory bodies that they need to step in," said Allison Fajans-Turner, bank engagement and policy lead at RAN and one of the co-authors of the report, on Tuesday. "Banks are not policing themselves. Regulators need to set rules to manage the financial risk that banks are putting into the system."
The authors of the report lay out several demands for banks, including that they drop all finance for fossil fuel expansion, adopt "binding and mandatory emissions reduction targets for upstream, midstream, and downstream fossil fuels," and increase financing for a "just transition," among others.
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Warren to Trump Treasury Chief: Did You Give Wall Street Execs Insider Info on Trade Talks?
"You owe Congress and the public an explanation for why you and other White House officials appear to be providing Wall Street insiders secret information on the tariffs," wrote Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Apr 28, 2025
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pressing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for answers following reports that officials inside President Donald Trump's White House have been providing Wall Street executives with advance notice about potentially market-moving trade talks with other nations, including China and India.
In a letter to Bessent dated April 25, Warren points to a Bloomberg story noting that Bessent "told a closed-door investor summit" that the "tariff standoff with China cannot be sustained by both sides and that the world's two largest economies will have to find ways to de-escalate."
The summit, which took place last Tuesday, was hosted by the Wall Street behemoth JPMorgan Chase in Washington, D.C. Bloomberg observed that the S&P 500 rose nearly 3% after Bessent's comments were leaked.
CNN additionally reported that Bessent's private assessment of the U.S.-China standoff "gave a boost to a Wall Street rally that had taken shape earlier on Tuesday, with all three major U.S. stock indexes hitting their highest levels of the day after Bessent's remarks were made public."
"Chaos, confusion, economic damage, and opportunities for corruption have become the hallmark of President Trump's rollout of his tariff policies."
Warren wrote in her letter that the JPMorgan event "was not open to the public or media" and expressed concern that Bessent "provided a room full of wealthy investors and Wall Street executives exclusive, advance tips about the administration's trade policy, potentially creating the opportunity for insider trading or other financial profiteering by well-connected friends of the administration."
"Chaos, confusion, economic damage, and opportunities for corruption have become the hallmark of President Trump's rollout of his tariff policies," Warren continued. "President Trump's opaque decision-making on tariffs and frequent, seemingly random changes of course have created a scenario where wealthy investors and well-connected corporations can get special treatment, receiving inside information they can use to time the market, or obtaining tariff exemptions that are worth billions of dollars—while Main Street, small businesses, and America's families are left to clean up the damage."
"You owe Congress and the public an explanation for why you and other White House officials appear to be providing Wall Street insiders secret information on the tariffs, while withholding that information from the public," the senator added, demanding that Bessent answer a series of questions—including who attended the event and how much time passed between his private remarks and press reports on the event.
Warren sent the letter a day after Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino reported that unnamed officials inside the Trump White House have been "alerting Wall Street execs they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India," heightening concerns that the administration is effectively encouraging insider trading.
Trump told reporters Friday that he "can't imagine" anyone in his administration tipping off Wall Street executives about nonpublic trade developments.
"I have very honorable people, that I can say," the president said. "So I can't even imagine it."
On Monday, a group of congressional Democrats warned the White House of "potential violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws by individuals close to the president with access to nonpublic information."
The Democratic lawmakers pointed specifically to a spike in the volume of call options—essentially bets that a stock price will rise—shortly before Trump announced a partial tariff pause earlier this month.
"We therefore urgently request a full accounting of the periodic transaction reports for all senior White House and executive branch employees since the start of the administration, and we ask for your commitment to transmit all reports to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to be made public, as was done during the first Trump administration," the lawmakers wrote Monday. "By failing to take these steps, the administration would be withholding critical information from the American people regarding potential violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws."
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American Oligarchy Petrified by Economic Chaos But Won't Criticize Trump Directly
Trump has too many ways to punish them.
Apr 14, 2025
Friends,
As tens of millions of Americans hussle to pay their taxes, President Donald Trump has put the entire global economy into chaos. 401(k)s are tanking, savings are shrinking, treasury bonds are losing value, supply chains are convulsing.
Even America’s oligarchs are petrified. They contributed millions to Trump’s inauguration. Many invested heavily in his campaign. They lavished praise on the new president and have supported his every move—in order to benefit from his promised big tax cut.
But the chaos he’s unleashed on the world economy is causing many of them to go public with their worries.
“Obviously,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a conference call with reporters, “the China stuff is significant. We don’t know the full effect.”
But we do know that global investors are fleeing Treasury bonds, which had been the safest place to put money in the world. That may not be the full effect, but it’s a huge and frightening one.
By Friday morning, Dimon was warning that the economy faced “considerable turbulence” from the tariffs, while echoing Trump’s assertion that the immediate turmoil was nothing to worry about. “I really almost don’t care fundamentally about what the economy does in the next two quarters,” Dimon said. “That isn’t that important. We’ll get through that. We’ve had recessions before and all of that.”
Oops. The word “recession” coming out of the mouth of the CEO of the largest bank in the United States? That itself is extraordinarily worrying.
Notably, JPMorgan has added nearly half a billion dollars to its financial cushion, preparing for losses from customers who won’t be able to pay credit card debts and loans.
Other oligarchs are repeating the R word.
In a Friday interview on CNBC, BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink, warned that the American economy was “very close—if not in—a recession now.” Fink admitted that in its push for tariffs, the United States had become “the global destabilizer” and that the trade war “went beyond anything I could have imagined in my 49 years in finance.”
Yesterday, Dan Ives, an analyst for Wedbush Securities, told investors that “the mass confusion created by this constant news flow out of the White House is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory, and demand.”
Many oligarchs continue to kiss Trump’s derriere while at the same time trying to signal to major investors that they’re sane. It’s tricky. “A willingness to adjust a strategy based on new facts and data is a sign of the strength of a leader,” Bill Ackman, the chief executive of the hedge fund Pershing Square, pirouetted on social media yesterday. “It is not an indication of weakness.”
No. It’s an indication of insanity.
“Sentiment has obviously deteriorated,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, one of the world’s largest banks, said in an interview. “Time is not our friend.”
When they speak in the passive tense like this, you know they’re pulling their punches.
None dare come right out and say it: Trump is f*cking out of his mind and crashing the entire world economy. “It’s not smart to criticize the president,” said Robert K. Steel, a veteran Wall Street executive and top Treasury Department official under President George W. Bush.
Not smart because Trump has too many ways to punish them.
Last month, the Trump Organization sued the giant financial services company Capital One for shutting the organization’s accounts after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The oligarchs know Trump has many ways to reward them, too.
On Friday, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, got a reprieve from Trump’s tariffs on China, which would have just about killed Apple’s iPhone profits. (The exclusions apply to smartphones and other electronics.)
Cleverly, Cook, and Apple had announced last Monday that, as a result of a conversation between Cook and Trump, Apple would be investing more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years and creating thousands of jobs, in what looked like “a bet on America.”
It was BS. The $500 billion figure was simply what Apple had already planned, including everything from Apple’s day-to-day activities with thousands of suppliers in all 50 states to the operation of its domestic data centers, as well as its investments in Apple TV+ and other projects already manufactured in the country.
The announcement mentioned a new advanced manufacturing plant in Houston to produce servers that support Apple’s AI, but the plant is owned by Foxconn, which is doing the investing. (Apple has perfected the art of outsourcing capital expenditures to its partners without risking its own money.)
But yesterday, Trump backtracked even on the electronics reprieve, calling it “temporary.” China, meanwhile, put a stop to shipments of rare earth materials critical to semiconductors and much of our military technology.
Where and how will this chaos end? The oligarch’s main line in to Trump is through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who apparently talked Trump down from the worst of his tariff craziness last week.
But Bessent himself is part of the chaos. He and others inside the White House are all saying radically different things. No one is in charge. Some, like Elon Musk and trade adviser Peter Navarro, are openly taking potshots at each other.
Bessent, a member of the billionaires club, doesn’t even get what this economic chaos is doing to average Americans. Last weekend, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that people who want to retire now aren’t paying attention to the stock market: “They don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.”
Hello?
The oligarchs won’t tell Trump how much chaos he’s unleashed, and they don’t even know how the chaos is affecting average people. The oligarchy is almost as incompetent and out of touch as is Trump.
But average people comprise the real economy. They’re also taxpayers. And their worried discussions over their kitchen tables spell even worse trouble ahead for the economy—and far worse ahead for Trump and his Republican Party.
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Sorry Stevie Wonder, We Do Need to Blame the Banks Responsible for the LA Fires
The four banks that sponsored the FireAid benefit concert were among the world’s largest fossil fuel industry financiers from 2016—when the Paris climate accord went into effect—through 2023.
Feb 14, 2025
Stevie Wonder was one of more than two dozen superstars who performed at FireAid, a six-hour benefit concert held late last month to raise money for Los Angeles wildfire victims and, according to event organizers, support “long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.” Viewed by more than 50 million people around the world, the benefit raised more than $100 million.
Before launching into “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” “Superstition,” and “Higher Ground,” Wonder called for unity in the face of the disaster. “In this world today, we have no time for blaming. We have no time for shaming,” he said. “We need to have prayer and come together as a united people of the world.”
Wonder was likely alluding to the thoroughly debunked lies uttered by then-President-elect Donald Trump, who falsely accused then-President Joe Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of mismanaging resources.
If someone on the FireAid stage had remarked how ironic it was that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs sponsored the event, 50 million people would have heard about the destructive role they are playing, probably for the first time.
Neither Biden, Newsom, nor Bass were at fault, but with all due respect to Mr. Wonder, it is long past time to blame and shame those who are truly responsible for fueling the climate crisis.
One could of course start with Trump, whose first administration rolled back or dismantled nearly 100 environmental safeguards and who—on day one of his new term—ordered federal agencies to begin gutting protections for the air, water, public lands, and the climate. Republican members of Congress, who have amassed 82% of oil and gas companies’ campaign contributions over the last two decades, are also to blame. And then there’s the fossil fuel industry itself, which was aware of the threat its products pose as early as 1954 but publicly denied the science for decades and funded disinformation campaigns to obstruct and delay government climate action.
Other responsible parties, notably banks and insurance companies, are less obvious. Paradoxically, a handful of them were among FireAid’s corporate sponsors, all of which presumably underwrote the concert to demonstrate their bona fides as caring, public-spirited companies. Joining American Express, Kaiser Permanente, and 20 other corporations were four banks—JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and U.S. Bancorp—and a financial services company—Capital Group—whose investments undermine the concert’s goal of preventing future fire disasters. In fact, the tens of billions of dollars they collectively invest in fossil fuel-related companies annually will make fire disasters in Southern California—and everywhere else—more likely to happen.
Climate Change the ‘Main Driver’ of Wildfires
The science is clear, regardless of what Donald Trump may claim. Primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, climate change is the “main driver” of an alarming increase in wildfires in the Western United States over the last four decades, according to the findings of a 2021 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“During 1984 to 2000, 1.69 million acres burned over 11 states,” NOAA’s PNAS study press release pointed out. “It doubled in size to [approximately] 3.35 million acres during 2001 to 2018. In 2020, the total annual burned area jumped to 8.8 million acres, more than five times of that in 1984 to 2000.”
“Even though wetter and cooler conditions could offer brief respites,” the press release added, “more intense and frequent wildfires and aridification in the Western states will continue with rising temperatures.”
A study published last November in Science Advances found that temperatures out West have indeed continued to rise since NOAA’s 2021 study, causing drought even when the region experienced normal precipitation due to moisture loss from “evaporative demand,” or atmospheric thirst. Once again, researchers predicted more severe, longer-lasting droughts covering wider areas as temperatures increase.
Just two months after the Science Advances study came out, Los Angeles County was engulfed in flames, prompting a multinational team of scientists at World Weather Attribution to produce a quick analysis. They found that, without a doubt, climate change “increased the likelihood of wildfire disaster in highly exposed Los Angeles area.”
The cost of that disaster was astronomical. A preliminary estimate of damages from the LA wildfires by AccuWeather ranged from $250 billion to $275 billion—more than the losses from the entire 2020 U.S. wildfire season. Other analysts estimate that the wildfires will cost insurers anywhere from $10 billion to $40 billion.
Burning Through Billions
The four banks that sponsored FireAid were among the world’s largest fossil fuel industry financiers from 2016—when the Paris climate accord went into effect—through 2023, according to the most recent “Banking on Climate Chaos” annual report, published by a handful of environmental groups in May 2024.
JPMorgan Chase: Although JPMorgan’s investment of $40.8 billion in fossil fuel, utility, and pipeline companies in 2023 was roughly half (in inflation-adjusted dollars) of what it invested in 2016, it is still the largest underwriter of fossil fuel deals. From 2016 through 2023, the bank—the largest in the United States—invested $430.9 billion (in unadjusted dollars), more than any other bank worldwide. Its top client was ExxonMobil, which received $15 billion, more than twice the $6.48 billion the bank poured into TransCanada Pipelines, its second largest investee.
Besides its relatively paltry donation for LA fire victims, JPMorgan is retreating from international efforts addressing the climate crisis.
Goldman Sachs: Goldman Sachs, which invested $184.9 billion from 2016 through 2023, was the 14th largest investor over that eight-year span. Its two biggest clients were the Saudi Arabian Oil Company ($4.38 billion) and Royal Dutch Shell ($3.2 billion). In 2023, Goldman Sachs invested $8.8 billion and was the fourth largest financier of fracking companies.
UBS: The Swiss-based UBS’s investments in fossil fuel-related companies dropped precipitously in 2023 to $8.8 billion, likely due to the bank’s dramatic profit swings, but between 2016 and 2023, it was the world’s 10th largest funder. Over those eight years, it invested $210.7 billion and was the biggest financier of metallurgic coal companies. UBS’s leading investee was Calpine Corporation, the largest U.S. natural gas and geothermal electricity provider, which received nearly $4 billion. Other top clients included Duke Energy ($3.25 billion); Parsley Energy, a natural gas developer ($3.4 billion); and Buckeye Partners, an oil pipeline company ($3 billion).
U.S. Bancorp: U.S. Bancorp—the fifth-largest U.S. bank—was the 28th largest financier, investing $97.27 billion over the eight years covered by the “Banking on Climate Chaos” report. Among its top investees were Occidental Petroleum ($2.2 billion) and Devon Energy ($1.9 billion). In 2023, U.S. Bancorp invested $12.77 billion and was the ninth biggest financier of fracking companies. (Besides sponsoring FireAid for an undisclosed sum, the company—which has about 200 branches and 4,000 employees in the Los Angeles area—donated a meager $100,000 to the United Way of Greater Los Angeles to help fire victims.)
Capital Group: The fifth financial institution that sponsored FireAid, Capital Group, is one of the world’s largest asset managers. As of May 2024, it held more than $173 billion in shares and bonds in 162 fossil fuel-related companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips, according to the 2024 report “Investing in Climate Chaos,” which did not document investments on an annual basis.
The Energy Transition Could Take ‘Generations’
JPMorgan, by far the worst of the five financial titans sponsoring FireAid, posed as a good corporate citizen by offering LA fire victims mortgage payment relief and donating $2 million to the American Red Cross, California Community Foundation, and United Way of Greater Los Angeles. But that’s chump change for a bank that posted a record $56.8 billion profit last year, a 19% increase from 2023.
Besides its relatively paltry donation for LA fire victims, JPMorgan is retreating from international efforts addressing the climate crisis. Just days before the bank announced its donation, it announced it was leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-sponsored organization of more than 140 banks from 44 countries that have pledged to align their investments and loans with the goal of attaining net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. A year before, in February 2024, JPMorgan quit Climate Action 100+, a $68-trillion investor organization that advocates for reining in world’s largest corporate carbon emitters to reduce financial risk.
JPMorgan says it left CA 100+ because it hired its own climate risk analysts, but it walked away shortly after the investor group began requiring members to broaden their corporate disclosure and implement climate transition plans, according to ESG Dive, a trade journal. The bank did not cite a reason for leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, but news outlets reported that Republican politicians had been pressuring banks to quit even before Trump, a notorious climate science denier, won the election last November.
A JPMorgan spokesperson promised that the bank would “continue to support the banking and investment needs of our clients who are engaged in energy transition and in decarbonizing different sectors of the economy.” And, to its credit, JPMorgan had already pledged to “finance and facilitate more than $2.5 trillion”—including $1 trillion for renewable energy and other “green initiatives”—by 2030 to “help advance long-term climate solutions and contribute to sustainable development.” In 2023 alone, the company invested $300 billion.
But the company remains the top fossil fuel industry financier and will continue to invest, regardless of the consequences. At a September 2022 congressional hearing, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who made $34.5 million that year, was unequivocal. When asked if his company has a policy against funding oil and gas projects, he responded: “Absolutely not. That would be the road to hell for America.” More recently, in April 2024, the company issued a report warning that it will take “decades, or generations, not years” to phase out fossil fuels and hit net-zero targets.
Fossil Energy Companies Are ‘Hugely Important’
Goldman Sachs, the sixth largest U.S. bank, announced in December 2019 that it would no longer invest in oil development in the Arctic or in thermal coal mines worldwide, a first for a U.S. bank. It also said it would invest $750 billion in sustainability financing, which includes green energy, by 2030.
Environmental groups cheered, but stressed that the bank had a long way to go to align its investments to meet net-zero goals. It still does.
Like his counterpart at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon rejects calls to sever his bank’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. “Traditional energy companies are hugely important to the global economy they are hugely important to Goldman Sachs,” he said in 2023, when he made $31 million, a 24% jump from the previous year. “We are all going to continue to finance traditional companies for a long time.”
Likewise, Goldman Sachs quit CA100+ (last August) and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (last December). “We have made significant progress in recent years on the firm’s net-zero goals and we look forward to making further progress, including by expanding to additional sectors in the coming months,” the bank said when it departed the alliance. “Our priorities remain to help our clients achieve their sustainability goals and to measure and report on our progress.”
Name, Blame, and Shame
Last year was the hottest on record, beating out the next warmest year—2023. Meanwhile, the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred over the last 10 years. In 2024, global temperatures exceeded the pre-industrial (1850 to 1900) average by 2.63°F (1.46°C), only slightly less than the Paris climate agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting the worldwide temperature increase to less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
The hotter it gets, the more likely such devastating events as the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene will be decidedly worse. More neighborhoods will be wiped out. More people will lose their homes. More will die.
Regardless, the world’s largest banks have failed to keep their pledge to support the central aim of the Paris accord, according to a new report by research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. BNEF analysts calculated that the ratio of financing green energy and infrastructure relative to financing fossil fuel-related ventures must reach 4 to 1 by 2030 to keep any temperature rise below 1.5°C. Since 2016, BNEF found, banks have invested nearly $6 trillion in fossil fuels but only $3.8 trillion in green energy. That’s a trifling 0.63 to 1 ratio. For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, only 63 cents went to clean energy.
The banking ratio is only slightly better now. In 2023, it was 0.89 to 1, according to BNEF, a minor improvement over 2022, when it was 0.74 to 1. And for all that JPMorgan crows it invests in “green initiatives,” its energy-supply banking ratio in 2023 was a measly 0.80 to 1, and it is doubtful that the bank will start investing four times more in green enterprises than in fossil fuel companies anytime soon.
Regardless, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and the other financial firms that sponsored FireAid and donated to local nonprofits aiding fire victims want to be seen as good guys. They correctly assume that the general public has no idea that their investments are ruining the planet. After all, the mainstream news media rarely, if ever, report on this topic, and the trade press that does is mainly read by industry insiders.
So no matter how heartfelt, Stevie Wonder—a celebrated humanitarian in his own right—was wrong. We should call out the people and corporations responsible for the climate crisis. If someone on the FireAid stage had remarked how ironic it was that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs sponsored the event, 50 million people would have heard about the destructive role they are playing, probably for the first time. A column like this one, unfortunately, does not have that kind of reach.
This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.
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Alarm Raised Over Wall Street Titan at SSA
"Nothing in Mr. Bisignano's career suggests that he understands the unique needs of older and disabled Americans," said the Alliance for Retired Americans' leader.
Dec 06, 2024
Critics of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the Social Security Administration, Frank Bisignano, warned this week that the Wall Street veteran may not be the best choice to run an agency that provides one of America's most important social safety nets.
"President-elect Trump has nominated financial software CEO and GOP donor Frank Bisignano to head the agency that administers Social Security benefits for some 70 million Americans. If confirmed, Bisignano will be accountable—not to corporate boards or stockholders—but to the American people, who depend on their Social Security benefits and pay for them over a lifetime of work," said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a Thursday statement.
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said in a statement that "nothing in Mr. Bisignano's career suggests that he understands the unique needs of older and disabled Americans."
"We are also concerned that his decades on Wall Street will leave SSA with a cheerleader for risky schemes like allowing investment firms and crypto corporations to gamble with the trust funds and benefits that Americans paid for and earned through a lifetime of work," Fiesta added.
Bisignano was previously an executive at Shearson Lehman Brothers and also held positions at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. During his tenure at the firm First Data Corp., he was listed as the second-highest paid CEO in the U.S. in 2017, per The New York Times. Bisignano is currently the president and CEO of Fiserv (which merged with First Data Corp. in 2019), a payments and financial technology firm.
"Frank is a business leader, with a tremendous track record of transforming large corporations. He will be responsible to deliver on the Agency's commitment to the American People for generations to come!" Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this week.
If confirmed, Bisignano would oversee an agency with more than 1,200 field offices and almost 60,000 employees, according to the Times, and his nomination comes at a time when money in Social Security's trust funds, a reserve that is used to make sure recipients get their full payment, could be entirely depleted by 2035.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers on Thursday signaled a willingness to target Social Security and other mandatory programs after meeting with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the duo that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to lead a new commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations.
In reaction to Bisignano's nomination, Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) quipped on X: "Why leave a $28 million/yr gig to work in government? My prediction: to cut Social Security."
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Wall Street Banks Accused of Trying to Sabotage Key Consumer Protection Rule
"The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
Nov 15, 2024
Consumer advocates applauded last month as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule aimed at making it easier for people to switch financial institutions if they're unhappy with a bank's service, without the bank retaining their personal data—but on Thursday, more than a dozen groups warned the CFPB that major Wall Street firms are trying to stop Americans from benefiting from the rule.
Several advocacy groups, led by the Demand Progress Education Fund, wrote to CFPB director Rohit Chopra warning that major banks—including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, TD Bank, and Wells Fargo—sit on the board of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), which has applied to the bureau for standard-setting body (SSB) status, which would give it authority over what is commonly known as the "open banking rule."
Standard-setting authority for the banks would present a major conflict of interest, said the groups.
The banks are also on the board of the Bank Policy Institute, which promptly filed what the consumer advocates called a "frivolous lawsuit" to block the open banking rule when it was introduced last month, claiming it will keep banks from protecting customer data.
At a panel discussion this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan also said the open banking rule, by requiring financial firms to unlock a consumer's financial data and transfer it to another provider for free, would cause "chaos" and amplify concerns over fraud.
"The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom."
The groups wrote on Thursday that big banks want to continue to "maintain their dominance by making it unduly difficult for consumers to switch institutions."
"The presence of these organizations on both the FDX and BPI boards undermines the credibility of FDX and presents various concerns relating to conflict of interest, interlocking directorate, and antitrust law," they wrote.
Upon introducing the finalized rule last month, Chopra said the action would "give people more power to get better rates and service on bank accounts, credit cards, and more" and help those who are "stuck in financial products with lousy rates and service."
The coalition of consumer advocacy groups—including Public Citizen, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Americans for Financial Reform—urged Chopra to reject FDX's application for standard-setting authority so long as the banks remain on its board.
“It would be a flagrant conflict of interest for the same banks who are suing to block the open banking rule because it threatens their market dominance to also be in charge of implementing it," said Demand Progress Education Fund corporate power director Emily Peterson-Cassin. "The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom. The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
The groups called the open banking rule "a historic step forward for the cause of giving consumers true freedom intheir financial lives."
"For this reason, it is imperative that SSB status not be granted to an organization whose board members are, either directly or through a trade association they are participating in, suing the CFPB to stop the rules from taking effect, particularly when such members may be ethically conflicted from such dual participation," said the groups. "By rejecting SSB status for FDX or any other organization with similar conflicts of interest pertaining to Section 1033, the CFPB will help prevent big banks from sabotaging open banking rules."
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