Friends,
A staged reading of Howard Zinn’s “A
People’s History of the United States” will be performed on Monday, February 25
at noon at the University of Baltimore Student Center Wright Theater, 21 W.
Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore. I will be one of the readers, along with Ron
Williams, Jasaga and others.
Kagiso, Max
https://truthout.org/articles/activists-interrupt-jpmorgan-chase-ceo-stop-funding-climate-change/ NEWS ANALYSIS
Activists Interrupt
JPMorgan Chase CEO: “Stop Funding Climate Change!”
Jamie
Dimon sits at the head of one of the top Wall Street funders of climate
change.MARK WILSON / GETTY IMAGES
February
24, 2019
Climate
activists interrupted JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Saturday to make a
clear demand: “Stop funding climate change!”
Dimon was
the key speaker at a morning session of the National Governors Association’s
annual winter meeting, taking place in Washington, D.C. The session was
held to “offer governors unique insights into the intersection of public policy
and the modern economy.”
As Dimon
was speaking, activists affiliated with Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the
D.C. chapter of 350.org rose to ask, “How is [climate change] not one of your
policy priorities?” and repeatedly said, “Jamie Dimon, stop funding climate
change!”
Dimon
continued to talk over the activists, who stood and held a banner reading,
“Chase: Stop profiting off dirty energy and rights abuses.” RAN posted video of
the disruption, which also shows the protesters being led away by security:
Things
got awkward at @jpmorgan CEO
Jamie Dimon’s @NatlGovsAssoc
address when @RAN and @350_DC
activists demanded that @Chase STOP
FUNDING #CLIMATECHANGE.
RT to make it known that Chase is the top US funder of fossil fuels. #wethestates #actonclimate https://www.ran.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RAN_JPMC_WhitePaper.pdf …
RT to make it known that Chase is the top US funder of fossil fuels. #wethestates #actonclimate https://www.ran.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RAN_JPMC_WhitePaper.pdf …
A report out last year
from RAN accused the financial giant
of being “the top U.S. funder of extreme fossil fuels,” citing its financing of
tar sands projects, ultra-deep water oil, Arctic oil, coal power, and LNG
exports.
“We want
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, to hear us loud and clear: funding
climate change is not what leadership looks like,” said RAN researcher Grant
Marr in a prepared statement. “As the
top Wall Street funder of tar sands pipelines and other fossil fuel projects,
Chase should be held responsible for driving us toward climate crisis.”
This piece was reprinted
by Truthout with permission or license.
Andrea
Germanos is senior editor and a staff writer at Common Dreams.
https://truthout.org/articles/investigation-what-the-jpmorgan-chase-energy-scandal-reveals-about-fossil-fuel-financing/ NEWS
Investigation:
What the JPMorgan Chase Energy Scandal Reveals About Fossil Fuel Financing
August
1, 2013
As more and more Americans are beginning to share scientists’
long expressed concerns over climate change, revelations of big bank energy
market manipulations highlight Wall Street’s entrenched stake in the fossil
fuel economy that is heating up the planet.
In what critics are calling Enron 2.0, JPMorgan Chase is
facing a reported fine in the range of $500 million from the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) for manipulating energy markets in California and
Michigan. Chase acquired a slew of aging power plants from Bear Stearns when
the firm tanked in the 2008 market meltdown.
Under pressure to reap significant returns, the bank then took
advantage of a loophole in the energy markets, scamming taxpayers and inflating
energy costs. Here’s how it worked:
First, the bank’s traders would offer lowballed electricity bids
to state grid operators a day ahead of delivery. On the day of, traders jacked
up the price so that operators took their business elsewhere. Then, taking
advantage of a so-called “make-whole” regulation, meant to protect consumers
against market volatility, states covered the cost of operating the plants,
even though Chase sold them zilch electricity.
Between September 2010 and June 2011, FERC charges the bank
pocketed $83 million in extraneous payments that translated into higher utility
bills for millions of customers.
“It’s another example of how closely tied up the financial
sector is with the energy sector,” said Amanda Starbuck with the Rainforest
Action Network. “Banks are involved in this business quite simply because
there’s money to be made.”
In order to squeeze money out of the outdated plants they had
acquired, Chase orchestrated what FERC describes as a “systemic cover-up”
altering their balance sheets to hide profits the racket generated. Blythe
Masters, head of the bank’s Global Commodities division and inventor of Credit
Default Swaps — the complicated financial instruments that helped lead to the
2008 Wall Street crash — personally took part.
Despite denials under oath to regulators, FERC says Masters had
full knowledge of the scheme and sought to hinder their enquiry by providing
“scores of false and misleading statements and material omissions” to
investigators. In one instance, FERC says Masters ordered an internal bank
document that questioned the legality of the bidding strategy be altered to
read, “JPMorgan does not believe that it violated FERC’s policies.”
FERC, in negotiations with Chase, is seeking a civil penalty of
$500 million from the bank. The agency leveled a fine of similar magnitude
against Barclays for conducting the same racket in the California energy market
from 2006 to 2008. Barclays, however, is refusing to pay up and has taken
regulators to court. Though FERC initially sought to hold Masters and other
Chase executives personally liable, as the agency has entered settlement talks
with the bank it has dropped those claims.
Now within regulators’ radars, Chase appears to be selling off its stake in the power plants, but it continues to hold on
to few including seven coal and six natural gas fired-plants.
Wall Street involvement in the energy sector is nothing new.
Starbuck says Bank of America, Citigroup and Chase loaned out some $8 billion
to the U.S. coal industry in 2012 alone. But, in what appears as a sea change
to many, banks have gone from simply financing the energy sector to becoming
producers and distributors in those markets.
Legal safeguards have long existed – going all the way back to
the National Bank Act of 1863 – barring commercial banks from acquiring
non-financial assets. Such laws are aimed at restricting banks from gaining
more power than they already have. As Saule Omarova, professor of law at the
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, writes:
“When the same banking organizations that control access to
money and credit also control access to such universal production inputs as raw
materials and energy, they are in a position to exercise disproportionate
control over the entire economic – and, by extension, political – system.”
In a new report, Omarova details what amounts to a gradual coup, dating back to
the Reagan era, in which lawmakers have gradually unwound regulations keeping
bank and commerce separate. Banks have either skirted regulations keeping them
out of physical commodities markets, or have become outright operators in those
markets with no legal recourse taken against them.
By “maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee and
more,” reported The New York Times recently, too-big-to-fail
banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have reaped billions in
profits “while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas
tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone.” Through
“controlling warehouses, pipelines and ports, banks gain valuable market
intelligence,” The Times notes, which “can give them an edge when trading
commodities.”
On Tuesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio began heading up a
congressional inquiry into the Wall Street manipulation of commodities markets.
Underlying the political theater on Capitol Hill, however, is the broader
question of the financial sector’s involvement in the fossil fueled energy and
corresponding infrastructure.
Adding irony to insult, JPMorgan is also involved in
California’s carbon offsetting markets. Such trading mechanisms have done
little to actually curb emissions and, if anything, Enron 2.0 shows just how
embedded banks have become with extractive industries — not simply financing
operations from loans, but literally running them themselves.
Conversely, credit default swap deals that hundreds of
municipalities nationwide entered into with Wall Street have led to fair hikes
and service cuts to public transportation that allow for low-emission commutes.
In New York City, approximately 16% of every metro card swipe goes to Wall
Street, according to an analysis from United NY, a community and union coalition. New
Yorkers have seen fare hikes of over 30 percent since 2008 to cover the cost.
In a major policy speech last month President Obama pledged to
do more to tackle climate change.
“That bright blue ball rising over the moon’s surface,” Obama
told an audience at Georgetown University, contains “everything we hold dear —
the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity
— that’s what’s at stake.” Excuses for inaction, according to the President, indicate
a “fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity.”
The speech comes amid a growing climate movement that has
pressured the president to take dramatic action, and follows a recent report
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that concentrations of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have surpassed 400 parts per million, climbing higher toward what climate
scientists warn may be a cataclysmic threshold plunging the earth into a period
of extreme weather events and volatility. CO2 concentrations have not been at
such levels in over 3 million years.
Concentrations of wealth at the top in the U.S. have never been
higher, either. The richest 1% controls nearly half of the country’s financial
wealth — a gap that has widened increasingly since Wall Street ushered in the
Great Recession more than five years ago.
Those impressed by the President’s climate bloviating might do
well to mind the consistent gap between Obama’s soaring rhetoric and his
actions. He also pledged toto go after those responsible for the financial crash
when he was first elected. Since then, a spool of scandals have rolled out of
Wall Street and not one executive from a single too-big-to-fail bank has been
placed behind bars.
“Wall Street has a lot to do to rebuild its reputation in the
eyes of the public,” says Starbuck. “A lot of these companies think they are
above the law. One way they could restore trust is by making a commitment to
use their money and financial power for projects and companies and sectors that
clean up the environment and help to rebuild communities after the financial
crisis.”
As it stands now, however, there is simply too much money at
stake for Wall Street to get out of the fossil fuel game. Any movement from
below for action on climate change will have to confront an economic system
dominated by banks with a vested interest in fossil fuels. Only big grassroots
numbers can rival the influence of Wall Street’s oil-soaked dollars.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
