Tag: banks

UK Gov’t Wants Sweeping Powers to Spy on Your Bank Account

The UK’s Labour government announced plans this week that would further erode civil rights in the country, this time in the name of “preventing benefit fraud”.

The plans include revoking the driver’s licenses of those convicted of benefit fraud, “early morning raids” by “crack teams” from the DWP, and – most shockingly – permitting the government access to private banking information so they can take back money they believe they are owed, without the knowledge or permission of the accused.

In their own classically impartial fashion, the BBC reported this as:

Benefit cheats could be stripped of driving licenses

But this isn’t about “benefit cheats”. Even the government’s own figures say that benefit fraud makes up only ~3% of the welfare budget, and this move will only save £1.5 billion over the next five years.

£300 million per year is nothing in government terms. They just pledged 10x that amount, per year, to Ukraine.

They don’t care about the money, they care about power and precedent.

  • They want to be able to take away your driver’s license.
  • They want to be able to monitor your bank account.
  • They want to be able to take your money without your knowledge.
  • They want to be able to search your electronic devices and track your spending.

Maybe it will start with “reclaiming benefits”, but do you think it will end there?

Remember they also want to introduce Universal Basic Income, which would mean – technically – everyone is on “benefits”.

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Davos Post Mortem: The US Vibe Shift Goes Global

  • Investors and businesses have an optimistic outlook for the US while pessimism hangs over Europe’s lagging productivity, innovation and competitiveness.
  • US banks are capitalizing on strong profits and regulatory adjustments, with billions being freed up for lending, mergers and acquisitions or buybacks.
  • Amid more tariffs, policymakers are rethinking how to frame their portfolios and placing much of tech, rare earths and the energy transition under this umbrella.

Rarely have I found the Davos attendees so split in their investment outlooks.

American investors and business leaders were giddy over a possible “Golden Age,” though most were bracing for what promised to be a rollercoaster ride. Meanwhile, Europeans were moping about their economies, red tape and lack of innovation. And the Chinese delegation was the smallest in years.

Conversations revolved around the big challenges investors and corporates are trying to solve right now, from pivots in US policy to the languishing state of Europe and China, artificial intelligence market concentration, the risks of tariffs, what pessimism or optimism had already been priced in or where private markets might head next.

Sitting across 40 private meetings and panels, I better understood the mindset of businesses, investors and policymakers. Here are three of my takeaways.

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Comer Says He Has Evidence Banks are ‘Debanking’ Conservatives After Trump Calls out BofA CEO, Chase

Republican Rep James Comer was on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo and discussed President Trump calling out banks for discriminating against conservative clients.

“Are you investigating whether or not US Banks are debanking conservatives?” Bartiromo asked.

“Yes, we are. We’ve heard numerous instances of conservatives being debanked and what we want to know is this a process of the bank’s ESG policy, or is this our government stepping in like what we found with Twitter and Facebook, where the government stepped in and said they wanted certain conservatives deplatformed and censored,” Comer said.

“We want to know again, is this is the government involvement another dirty trick by the Joe Biden administration, or is this just bad liberal policy that discriminates against conservatives by the bank,” Comer continued.

“So, you have evidence of some banks debanking conservatives?” Bartiromo asked.

“Yes, especially people that were involved in different energy type businesses and things like that, as well as very well spoken, outspoken conservative activists, so, there are numerous instances, enough to open an investigation,” Comer continued.

“What should these banks expect in the coming months from your office?” Bartiromo asked.

“Well, they are gonna be asked a lot of questions. And I will say this for the banks, during the Biden influence pedaling investigation, the banks were the one entity that did cooperate with us,” Comer said.

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PayPal Admits Freezing Account Over Covid Mandate Criticism

It seemed pretty obvious as it was happening – but now there appears to be proof that PayPal was punishing users for their Covid-era speech that didn’t align with official narratives.

One of the critics of pandemic mandates that got “debanked” is UsForThem founder Molly Kingsley, who has been told by PayPal that her account got frozen because it was used to receive donations, and that was found to be outside the payment giant’s “acceptable use” rules.

The parent campaign group and Kingsley were vocal critics of obligatory Covid vaccination of children, forcing them to wear face masks, as well as school closures.

And now PayPal has spelled it out. The Telegraph reported the account was terminated because of “content published by UsForThem relating to mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations and school closures.”

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UK Gov’t Wants Sweeping Powers to Spy on Your Bank Account

The UK’s Labour government announced plans this week that would further erode civil rights in the country, this time in the name of “preventing benefit fraud”.

The plans include revoking the driver’s licenses of those convicted of benefit fraud, “early morning raids” by “crack teams” from the DWP, and –  most shockingly – permitting the government access to private banking information so they can take back money they believe they are owed, without the knowledge or permission of the accused.

In their own classically impartial fashion, the BBC reported this as:

Benefit cheats could be stripped of driving licenses

But this isn’t about “benefit cheats”. Even the government’s own figures say that benefit fraud makes up only ~3% of the welfare budget, and this move will only save £1.5 billion over the next five years.

£300 million per year is nothing in government terms. They just pledged 10x that amount, per year, to Ukraine.

They don’t care about the money, they care about power and precedent.

  • They want to be able to take away your driver’s license.
  • They want to be able to monitor your bank account.
  • They want to be able to take your money without your knowledge.
  • They want to be able to search your electronic devices and track your spending.

Maybe it will start with “reclaiming benefits”, but do you think it will end there?

Remember they also want to introduce Universal Basic Income, which would mean – technically – everyone is on “benefits”.

This is clearly a pathway to a “Social Credit” system.

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U.S. Federal Reserve withdraws from global climate coalition

The United States Federal Reserve has withdrawn from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a global coalition of central banks engaged in the study of climate risk that was launched in 2017.

“While the Board has appreciated the engagement with the NGFS and its members, the work of the NGFS has increasingly broadened in scope, covering a wider range of issues that are outside of the Board’s statutory mandate,” the central bank said in a statement on Friday.

The Fed has come under pressure in recent years from Republican lawmakers, including over concerns that climate concerns have unduly influenced financial regulation and that the central bank has become increasingly politicized.

In September, two House Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate U.S. bank regulators’ membership in the NGFS.

Graham Steele, a former Biden-era Treasury official, said the Fed’s decision is “clearly a political move.”

“It defies what we know about the science and economic science risks of climate change,” Steele said in a statement. “There is no way to read this as anything other than responding to short-term political considerations.”

The central bank joined the global coalition in 2020.

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‘Net-Zero’ ESG banking cartel continues collapse in aftermath of Trump victory

BlackRock announced on Thursday that it is leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The asset management behemoth becomes the latest U.S. megacorporation to leave the ESG climate narrative coalition after President-elect Trump defeated Kamala Harris on Election Day.

The move follows the departure of the six biggest U.S. banks—Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan—from the group after Election Day.

Charles Gasparino of the New York Post, who first broke the BlackRock news, remarked on X that it represents a “massive blow to the ESG investing movement.”

The Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was established in April 2021, at the height of Covid hysteria, under the auspices of the United Nations. Initially, the NZBA attracted 43 major global banks, representing a significant portion of the world’s banking assets.

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World War I—The Great Banker Bailout

“We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; a lance-corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces; we find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death. The sun goes down, night comes, the shells whine, life is at an end.”—All Quiet on the Western Front

It is estimated that the disaster of World War I claimed some 15-22 million lives. This does not even take into account the injuries, property destruction, and other post-war consequences. The above quote from the well-known novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, captures a horrific snapshot of World War I. While people often flippantly talk about war—especially from within the borders of a wealthy international hegemon like the United States—people ought to read such descriptions and soberly weigh the costs and benefits of going to war.

Given the description of the destruction above, plus the fact that Woodrow Wilson ran on the slogan, “He kept us out of war,” Americans probably would have resented the fact that the late entry of the United States in World War I served, at least in large part, to bail out American bankers. Such a statement as, “We are fighting this war on behalf of the bankers,” was, at one time, enough to land an American populist presidential candidate—Eugene V. Debs—in prison under the Espionage Act and Sedition Acts in 1918. However, following the war, Woodrow Wilson admitted,

Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any woman—let me say, is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? . . . This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.

Yet, in the above quote, Wilson only admitted that this was the case for the commercial powers of Germany and its rivals, but he did not acknowledge the rescue that the US performed for American bankers in the war, who had been funding the Allied cause and providing loans to the Allied powers. The newly-printed money for these loans, supplied to Allied European powers, was quickly funneled back to certain industries in the United States who provided war materials. In the middle were the Fed-connected bankers.

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The CFPB Wants You To Pay For Mistakes Of Others

Imagine receiving an email from a stranger offering you one hundred thousand dollars in a week if you send them ten thousand dollars today. Most of us would immediately recognize this as a scam and avoid it. However, what if you were guaranteed to get your initial ten thousand dollars back, even if it turned out to be a fraud? It seems obvious that removing such risk would encourage people to make reckless financial decisions – to everyone except President Biden’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB.) This is evidenced by their recent lawsuit against the fintech payment service Zelle.

The CFPB is suing Zelle arguing that it should be forced to reimburse anyone who unwittingly transfers their own money to a scammer. Its actions seem all the more disingenuous given that no federal law endorsed or approved by Congress saddles fintech payment processors with such liability — but progressives have long been trying to create one.

Now with a new administration incoming, CFPB Chair Rohit Chopra and his army of bureaucrats are making a final push to circumvent Congress and enact laws themselves to burnish their resumés before Trump cleans house. If Chopra’s policies are so beneficial or popular, why can’t they receive a vote in Congress? 

What the CFPB is asking Zelle to do is akin to forcing us to reimburse others for their online gambling losses. It presents a unique moral hazard by effectively making Zelle provide ‘scam insurance’ on its peer-to-peer platform where users directly self-authorize transactions. How could such platforms possibly ensure that any and every time its customers send money to another (at their behest) it’s not a scam? The notion that people should be able to irresponsibly send money – despite receiving warnings from the app, already in place – to an unvetted dubious recipient without consequences is one of the more wrongheaded ideas to have ever been floated when it comes to regulating our banks.

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Secretive Shadow Banks Utilize Innovative BoE Tool Amid Financial Scrutiny

The Bank of England (BoE) has recently launched a new financial facility aimed at providing support to non-bank financial institutions, commonly known as shadow banks. However, details regarding the identities of these shadow banks remain shrouded in secrecy, raising concerns and interest in the financial community. The introduction of this tool marks a significant step in the BoE’s efforts to monitor and enhance financial stability within the market.

This newly developed tool enables these shadow banks to access liquidity while avoiding the transparency obligations typically mandated for traditional banking entities. This move has sparked a debate about the potential risks involved, particularly regarding the systemic stability of the financial ecosystem, as more entities operate outside the purview of regulatory scrutiny.

According to the BoE, the initiative aims to foster resilience in the financial sector, a goal that gains importance amid escalating economic pressures. As non-traditional banks increasingly play a pivotal role in the economy – providing credit to businesses and consumers alike – their operations have come under increased scrutiny from regulators concerned about risk management and leverage.

Despite the advantages, the decision not to disclose the identities of the accessing shadow banks has led to questions about accountability and risk assessment. The lack of transparency could hinder regulators’ ability to gauge potential vulnerabilities in the financial system and act preemptively in the event of instability.

The BoE is insisting that the tool will be pivotal in shielding the economy from monetary shocks and broadening its surveillance capabilities. However, the financial community is divided on whether this approach is conducive to fostering a sound financial environment or if it would exacerbate the challenges associated with non-bank financial entities operating in the shadows.

As the K-shaped recovery from the pandemic continues, the implications of this new facility could be profound. Observers are keenly watching how this development unfolds, especially given that shadow banks often emerged as lending sources during economic downturns. Nonetheless, their rise also invites cautious examination regarding the inherent risks that accompany their operations.

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