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Demand for Trump's Social Security Chief Bisignano to Resign After $30 Billion Implosion of Former Company
"Bisignano is in charge of the American people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits, as well as the collection of our taxes," said one advocate. "If he engaged in wrongdoing, the people need to know."
Oct 30, 2025
The new CEO of the financial services technology company Fiserv said Wednesday that the firm's financial outlook was grim, sending its stock collapsing by more than 40% and erasing $30 billion in market value—and laid the blame squarely with a Trump administration appointee whom the president has praised as "amazing."
When nominating former Fiserv CEO Frank Bisignano as Social Security administrator earlier this year, President Donald Trump said the executive frequently "takes troubled entities and turns them around."
With current Fiserv chief Mike Lyons warning on Wednesday that Bisignano had made major missteps as CEO, overinflating its sales projections and relying on short-term cost-cutting before selling his stock for $500 million, the advocacy group Social Security Works said beneficiaries of the government's anti-poverty program for senior citizens should be alarmed that the former executive is now in charge of their crucial benefits.
"Fiserv lost 40% of its value because the former CEO, Frank Bisignano, is a liar," said SSW. "But Bisignano is Trump's buddy, so he can only fail up. He's now in charge of your Social Security."
Lyons told analysts and investors that when Bisignano was leading Fiserv from 2020 until earlier this year, the company made sales projections that "would have been objectively difficult to achieve even with the right investment and strong execution."
He added that Bisignano made "decisions to defer certain investments and cut certain costs [which] improved margins in the short term but are now limiting our ability to serve clients in a world-class way, execute product launches to our standards and grow revenue to our full potential.”
Translating Lyons' comment, Brett Arends wrote at MarketWatch that "under Bisignano, the company made forecasts it could not plausibly have achieved" and that the former CEO "was chasing short-term quarterly results, not building the business."
"Did Bisignano know that Fiserv’s stock was about to tank, and ask his friend Donald Trump for a life raft?"
Lyons broke the news to investors weeks after a police pension fund sued Fiserv and Bisignano, as well as the new CEO, for "artificially inflating [Fiserv’s] growth numbers."
But along with causing his former company's value to plummet, emphasized SSW president Nancy Altman on Thursday, Bisignano personally benefited from overestimating his firm's performance—selling more than three million shares after he was appointed Social Security administrator for at least $500 million.
"That sale saved him $300 million (and counting) in stock value," said Altman. "Did Bisignano know that Fiserv’s stock was about to tank, and ask his friend Donald Trump for a life raft?"
Altman demanded that Bisignano "resign immediately" from his roles at the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, where he was also named the first-ever CEO earlier this month.
"Bisignano is in charge of the American people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits, as well as the collection of our taxes—despite his total lack of expertise, or even basic knowledge, of either," said Altman. "He infamously admitted that he had to Google ‘Social Security’ when Trump offered him the job. If he engaged in wrongdoing, the people need to know."
Altman called on the US Department of Justice and Congress to launch "immediate" investigations into Bisignano's conduct as CEO of Fiserv, but noted that with Republican allies of Trump running the government, the former executive is unlikely to be held accountable."
"The only recourse," said Altman, "is for Democrats to win control of Congress and make investigating Bisignano a top priority.”
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Report Reveals $2 Billion of New Financing by Big Banks for Oil and Gas in the Amazon
"These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”
Oct 21, 2025
A day after the Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras announced it would begin drilling for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River "immediately" after obtaining a license despite concerns over the impact on wildlife, an analysis on Tuesday revealed that banks have added $2 billion in direct financing for oil and gas in the biodiverse Amazon Rainforest since 2024.
The report from Stand.earth—and Petrobras' license—come weeks before officials in Belém, Brazil prepare to host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), where advocates are calling for an investment of $1.3 trillion per year for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.
Examining 843 deals involving 330 banks, Stand.earth found that US banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi are among the worst-performing institutions, pouring between $283 million and $326 million into oil and gas in the Amazon.
The biggest spender on oil and gas in the past year has been Itaú Unibanco, the Brazilian bank, which has sent $378 million in financing to oil and gas firms for extractive activities in the Amazon.
"Oil and gas expansion in the Amazon endangers one of the world’s most vital ecosystems and Indigenous peoples who have protected it for millennia," said Stand.earth. "In addition to fossil fuels leading global greenhouse gas emissions, in the Amazon their extraction also accelerates deforestation, and pollutes rivers and communities."
The group's research found that banks have directly financed more than $15 billion to oil and gas companies in the Amazon region since the Paris Agreement, the legally binding climate accord, was adopted in 2016. Nearly 75% of the investment has come from just 10 firms, including Itaú, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America.
The analysis comes weeks after the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance said it was suspending its operations, following decisions by several large banks to leave the alliance that was established in 2021 to limit banks' environmental footprint, achieve net-zero emissions in the sector by 2050, and set five-year goals for reducing the institutions' financing of emissions.
"Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories."
Devyani Singh, lead researcher for Stand.earth's new bank scorecard on fossil fuel financing, noted that European banks like BNP Paribas and HSBC have "applied more robust policies to protect the sensitive Amazon rainforest than their peers" and have "significantly dropped in financing ranks."
But, said Singh, "no bank has yet brought its financing to zero. Every one of these banks must close the existing loopholes and fully exit Amazon oil and gas without delay.”
More than 80% of the banks' Amazon fossil fuel financing since 2024 has gone to just six oil and gas companies: Petrobras, Canada's Gran Tierra, Brazil's Eneva, oil trader Gunvor, and two Peruvian companies: Hunt Oil Peru and Pluspetrol Camisea.
The companies have been associated with human rights violations and have long been resisted by Indigenous people in the Amazon region, who have suffered from health impacts of projects like the Camisea gas project, a decline in fish and game stocks, and a lack of clean water.
“It’s outrageous that Bank of America, Scotiabank, Credicorp, and Itaú are increasing their financing of oil and gas in the Amazon at a time when the forest itself is under grave threat," said Olivia Bisa, president of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation in Peru. "For decades, Indigenous Peoples have suffered the heaviest impacts of this destruction. We are calling on banks to change course now: by ending support for extractive industries in the Amazon, they can help protect the forest that sustains our lives and the future of the planet.”
Stand.earth's report warned that both the Amazon Rainforest—which provides a habitat for 10% of Earth's biodiversity, including many endangered species—and the people who live there are facing "escalating threats" from oil and gas companies and the firms that finance them, with centuries of exploitation driving the forest "toward an ecological tipping point with irreversible impacts that have global consequences."
Oil and gas exploration is opening roads into intact parts of the Amazon and other forests, while perpetuating the new fossil fuel emissions that scientists and energy experts have warned have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating.
"With warming temperatures, the delicate ecological balance of the Amazon could be upset, flipping it from being a carbon-absorbing rainforest into a carbon-emitting savannah," reads the group's report.
Jonas Mura, chief of the Gavião Real Indigenous Territory in Brazil, said "the noise, the constant truck traffic, and the explosions" from Eneva's projects "have driven away the animals and affected our hunting."
"Even worse: they are entering without our consent," said Mura. "Our territory feels threatened, and our families are being directly harmed. Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories."
"These companies have no commitment to the environment, to Indigenous and traditional peoples, or to the future of the planet," he added. "These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”
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Wall Street’s Deregulation Agenda Will Cost Everyday Americans Everything
The Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm.
Sep 24, 2025
If Californians have a financial dream these days, it’s probably the modest goal of getting by, paycheck to paycheck. A more ambitious goal may be buying a house or building an emergency savings fund. But to a great degree these days, that dream is going to depend on decisions made by elected officials in Sacramento and Washington DC.
At the Academy of Financial Education, based in Fresno, California, we work with everyday people who are not only trying to get by, but are seeking long-term financial stability for their families. People like Aline, a restaurant consultant in the Bay Area, balancing budgets for her family and her business. Or Sara, who is working to increase her credit score and buy her first house.
A major impediment to their efforts is a financial system whose exploitative products flood their social media, TV, email inbox, and every other marketing channel. Buy now, pay later services are simply predatory loans in disguise, hiding the full cost of fees and charges associated with the service. And cryptocurrency, pitched as the next solution to our income woes, is barreling into our economy with little to no oversight.
Our own financial behaviors are intricately connected to the health and fairness of our financial system. The financial services industry, be it Wall Street or newfangled cryptocurrency peddlers, are using predatory and extractive practices that harm workers, families, and communities with impunity. Under their influence, the Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm. It is ready to allow cryptocurrency into 401k portfolios, putting secure retirements at risk.
In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
The current administration has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of the best financial advocates we have in the government. Since the start of this administration, CFPB staff have been fired, ordered to stop working on enforcement actions, and drop legal challenges to financial institutions that are causing people harm. Now hamstrung by funding cuts passed by the Republican Congress as well, it is unable to operate properly.
Congress created the CFPB after the 2008 financial crisis, itself a product of negligent financial institutions. Since then, the CFPB has returned $21 billion to 200 million people through its enforcement actions and saved tens of billions more by implementing commonsense safeguards. Safeguards including a cap on overdraft fees, removing medical debt from credit reports, and regulating tech companies providing shiny new financial products. In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
A financial marketplace without the CFPB is an open playground for Wall Street, big banks, and tech companies to profit off you and me—without a single guardrail. Companies like Elon Musk’s PayPal, which almost came under supervision by the CFPB until the Republican Congress rolled back that plan.
The newest industry on the block is crypto. Crypto companies claim they provide financial opportunity, flexibility, and freedom, but we know this is a lie. In California alone, crypto scams run rampant enough that the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has a running list of them. New legislation in the US Senate aims to all but exempt the majority of crypto platforms and digital assets from meaningful oversight. Cryptocurrency is on the verge of becoming an even more predatory and scammy activity.
The losses of financial protection and oversight make it harder for nonprofit organizations like mine, focused on financial empowerment, to help our clients and community with budgeting, credit scores, planning, and more because we do not—cannot—work in a vacuum. Dismantling the CFPB and allowing crypto to run unchecked creates new obstacles, vulnerabilities, and distractions for our clients, disrupting their ability to plan for the future and pursue their goals. They will be more likely to experience financial loss and unnecessary suffering, and they won’t have a government advocate like the CFPB to rely on.
We need our whole government watching out for working people, not big banks and tech companies. Costs continue to rise and new scams plague the financial marketplace—from predatory buy-now-pay-later loans to shady crypto scams. By deregulating our financial system and dismantling critical allies like the CFPB, our elected officials are leaving everyday Americans holding the bag.
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