BANK OF AMERICA B of A

THE WORST? COAL, TAX DODGE, DIRTY DOZEN PVT INTEL, PRISONS, NOT DEFENSE?

see BOFA2 7/17

see bofa tag

html anti-EFCA

HQ charlotte NC

fund ff

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an 11 24common dr

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 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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woke corp BS?

[vid]

State financial officers put Bank of America on notice for allegedly 'de-banking' conservatives

POLITICS April 18

State financial officers put Bank of America on notice for allegedly 'de-banking' conservatives

FIRST ON FOX: A group of 15 state financial officers penned a letter to Bank of America, warning it against discriminating against conservatives and religious Americans.

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very bad code

vid coming for your guns, climate...rokita BS

Embed

bank of America accused of discriminating against conservatives

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Timothy Two Project International founder Steve Curtis join "Fox & Friends First" to discuss the bombshell allegations and how the bank has responded to the accusations.

FIRST ON FOX: A group of 15 financial officers representing 13 states issued a warning to Bank of America over its alleged practices of "politicized de-banking" targeting conservatives.

In a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, the officials said the bank's practices threaten its own financial health and reputation with customers while simultaneously harming the U.S. economy and Americans' civil liberties. They pointed to examples of Bank of America shuttering the accounts belonging to Christian groups and leaders and joining a net-zero climate alliance in addition to its poor viewpoint diversity rating.

"Americans should never have to worry that their personal financial decisions will be weaponized against them," Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball said in a statement. "This practice has become all too common, and banks must urgently course correct to uphold their fiduciary duty and safeguard the constitutional freedoms of Americans."

She blasted executives at financial institutions for taking advantage "of the divided political climate to engage in politicized de-banking."

CHRISTIAN NONPROFIT CLAIMS IT WAS 'DE-BANKED' BY BANK OF AMERICA OVER ITS RELIGIOUS VIEWS

A Bank of America store front

"Given the large number of nonprofits we serve that are affiliated with religious organizations, it’s absurd to think religious beliefs are a factor in any account closing decision," a Bank of America spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "Very simply, they are not." (AP2013)

In one example highlighted by Ball and the other 14 officials, Bank of America in April 2023 shut down the bank account belonging to Indigenous Advance Ministries, a Christian charitable organization that assists at-risk children, prisoners and sex trafficking victims in Uganda. The bank further closed the accounts of a Memphis, Tennessee, church that donated to that group.

Bank of America explained the action was taken because of the group's "business type" and that its activities exceeded the "bank’s risk tolerance." After repeated requests for clarification from Indigenous Advance Ministries, Bank of America said the accounts were closed because a business affiliated with the group engaged in debt collection, the Christian Post newspaper reported.

GOP AGs PUT MAJOR US BANK ON NOTICE FOR ALLEGED 'DE-BANKING' OF CONSERVATIVES

According to the letter, in a similar action last year, Bank of America closed the account of Timothy Two Project International, which trains pastors in more than 65 countries. The bank reportedly informed Timothy Two Project International that it was "operating a business type we have chosen not to service."

And three years prior, Bank of America reportedly froze the accounts of Christian author and preacher Lance Wallnau for allegedly laundering money. It then unfroze his account after asking him "invasive" questions about his activities, the state officers wrote.

A photo of Brian Moynihan

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/File)

The letter stated that Bank of America's actions strongly suggest that "systemic drivers of religious and political bias may be at work within the company as a whole."

The bank, though, pushed back on those accusations.

"Given the large number of nonprofits we serve that are affiliated with religious organizations, it’s absurd to think religious beliefs are a factor in any account closing decision," Bank of America spokesperson Bill Halldin told Fox News Digital. "Very simply, they are not."

NIGEL FARAGE ON HIS EFFORTS TO EXPOSE 'DE-BANKING'

The state financial officers also said Bank of America's membership in the so-called Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a global group that coordinates actions taken by banks to push a green energy transition, may facilitate de-banking. They noted that commitments made by Bank of America through its membership could greatly harm farmers in their states since it will lead to higher prices.

Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball

Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley/File)

And the letter pointed to Bank of America's low ranking on the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, a benchmark for measuring corporate respect for free speech and freedom of religion. The index found that Bank of America partners with left-wing groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for American Progress when it comes to its gift-matching program but leaves out faith-based groups, instead citing its support for "homeless shelters, soup kitchens or other social service needs."

"This pattern of internal political and religious bias at Bank of America poses risks for public funds invested in the company as well as for the millions of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits who rely on its services," the letter to Moynihan states. "Bank of America’s de-banking policies and practices improperly subordinate financial well-being to other factors and place the company’s business interests at risk."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The letter concluded by asking Bank of America to take a number of good faith steps to address the concerns, including eliminating viewpoint discrimination and exiting the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

"Financial institutions like Bank of America should not be allowed to restrict Americans' access to capital based solely on their political or religious views. SFOF will continue to work with our members to fight for financial sanity, free of political agendas," said State Financial Officers Foundation CEO Derek Kreifels.

Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

Conversation 469 Comments

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ref report

https://www.commondreams.org/news**/2022/03**/30/despite-splashy-net-zero-vows-big-banks-dumping-trillions-fossil-fuels

despite 'Splashy' Net-Zero Vows, Big Banks Dumping Trillions Into Fossil Fuels

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge, these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all."

JAKE JOHNSON

March 30, 2022

Flouting their public vows to put themselves and their clients on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the world's 60 largest private banks have provided a total of $4.6 trillion in financing for the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016.

That's according to the latest edition of Banking on Climate Chaos, an annual report that tracks the banking industry's funding of oil and gas initiatives that are threatening global hopes of reining in carbon pollution and averting climate disaster.

In 2021 alone, the report finds, the world's biggest private-sector banks financed oil and gas to the tune of $742 billion. That year, the 60 banks featured in the new analysis poured $185.5 billion into the 100 companies doing the most to expand the fossil-fuel sector worldwide through offshore drilling, fracking, coal mining, liquefied natural gas infrastructure, and more. Authored by Oil Change International, the Rainforest Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and other groups and endorsed by hundreds of organizations from around the world, the report published Wednesday spotlights the marked contrast between banks' public commitments to net-zero emissions targets and their actions, which reflect a continued stake in fossil fuel development.

The worst offenders in the banking industry, according to the report, are the U.S. financial behemoths JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America,which together accounted for 25% of all fossil fuel financing identified over the past six years.

The report highlights a number of specific projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline (funded by JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America), drilling in offshore Guyana (funded by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America), and the Line 3 Pipeline (funded by TD, Scotiabank, and the Bank of Montreal), efforts that have drawn fierce resistance from Indigenous communities.

"Indigenous peoples have long been leading the fight for the sacredness of the land, water, and Earth," Mea Johnson, divestment campaign coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement Wednesday. "Mother Earth has always given us what we need to thrive. We will not back down until our natural balance is restored and anyone helping fund the extractive destruction of our communities will be held accountable."

Alison Kirsch, research and policy manager at the Rainforest Action Network, added that "any further expansion of fossil fuels risks locking humanity into generations of climate catastrophe, yet the top fossil clients of the world's largest banks are still being showered with tens of billions of dollars even as they actively expand drilling, mining, fracking, and other fossil fuel development unabated."

"With Wall Street banks leading the charge," Kirsch added, "these financial institutions are directly complicit in undermining a climate-stable future for us all and must immediately end their support of any further fossil fuel infrastructure expansion."

The banks' financing decisions fly in the face of their own pledges to bring their policies into line with critical climate goals, such as achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a benchmark that 44 of the 60 banks profiled in the new report have backed.

"But global banks have massively supported the companies doing the most to open new oil and gas fields," notes the new report. "Banks with net-zero commitments last year... financed the top 20 upstream oil and gas expansion companies, potentially helping to lock the planet into decades of climate-warming emissions." According to the International Energy Agency, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would mean ensuring "no new oil and gas fields."

Adele Shraiman, a representative for theSierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said Wednesday that the analysis "makes it clear that banks must clean up their act and stop funding the expansion of dirty fossil fuel projects like fracked gas exports, tar sands pipelines, and offshore drilling in order to align with what the science demands and what their own commitments require."

"Despite their splashy climate pledges, big banks have largely continued with business-as-usual and actually increased their overall fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement," said Shraiman. "As we look ahead to shareholder season, we'll be keeping up the pressure on the banks and their investors to take these critical reforms seriously and stop bankrolling the fossil fuel industry's reckless expansion plans."

dn 1120

...John Kerry is a good example. And it's not to pick him out and say he's particularly bad or particularly awful, but here's a guy who was in government. When he was in government, he was very supportive of fossil fuel development, fracking in particular. He left office. He then got a top position at Bank of America, which is one of the largest financiers of fossil fuel development in the world. And then he comes back into government as Biden's at least first climate pick. And it's not to say that John Kerry is going to be terrible on climate, but it is to say, as one example of many, that we need to understand where these people come from. Joe Biden, on the campaign, on climate, on climate policy, his campaign very early on said it was seeking a, quote, "middle ground" on climate policy.

from newbook ggl:

BANK OF AMERICA

In terms of political clout, probably a distant second behind Goldman Sachs and maybe Citi, but notable here b/c biggest bank in US (actually world with 2.3 trillion in assets[FleetBoston, which had already acquired a number of banks bought B of A, but continued to call it Bo f A: John Brown founder, Rhode Island slave trader] ), and by buying Merrill Lynch became the biggest brokerage firm in 2009 (only to find it lost 15 billion the previous quarter, billions in executive bonuses, 87K ru, stock went from 33 dollars to less than 6.; asked for another 20 billion in bailouts when ML losses discovered; used some to lobby Congress on executive pay[ceo ken Lewis gets 34.8 million, 779 times the average teller pay], mortgage and credit card fee restrictions and consumer financial protection agency). and in two years invested 6.4 billion dollars in coal (RAN). CCA 20 million dollar loan; gouged SC unemployed. Huge lobbying (biggest of TARP recipients). 14 million in 2008.

…

Stopped selling subprime mortgages in 2001, but sold CDO's based on them, still do). Lost 3 billion in 2007. In 2008, the industry lost half a trillion on CDO's. Got 100 billion plus in bailout, though no penalty like AIG. Repaid 45 billion in 2009. (merger mania before and after collapse, eg, Countrywide 2008, biggest lender, for 2.8 billion dollars. Sued by ten states, set up 8.4 billion dollar program (status?) plus 700 million in fines.

Dec 2010 B of A joined other banks in refusing to handle Wikileaks donations.At this time it threatned to release bank info

B of A hired TEKSystem, amateur Facebook scrape and mainstream media ; report on Occupy and hackers.

HBGary hired to go after Anonymous because of impending threat of bank info release; Barr falsely claimed he had hacked Anonymous and that he would reveal info at upcoming conference in a newspaper article feb 5 2011; so they hacked Barr instead

Feb 2013 B of A cache posted by Anonymous (from a misconfigured server)

June 2013 mortgage unit systematically lied, fraudulently denied loan modifications and paid bounty for driving customers into foreclosure (Dayen, Salon). Used HAMP program which was supposed to help four million homeowners (only about 870 k in system) to extract the maximum money possible before foreclosing. They tossed applications that had documents more than 60 days old (after sitting on file how long?), tossing out as many at 1500 in a blitz”, and falsified records sent to Treasury to cover their tracks. Employees that met quota were give bonuses, those that did not, or who questioned the ethics, were fired. Some who got denied HAMP were refi were given as B of A one, of course at a higher interest rate.

San Diego faced 13 years for chalk vandalization july 2013

We would probably not know of any of this if Chamber member and fellow Hunton & Williams client Bank of America was not getting worried about what Wikileaks would reveal, so HBGary’s Barr tried to hack Anonymous; they hacked him instead and made the emails public. Moreover, they uncovered a dirty tricks campaign that involved fabricating supposedly incriminating documents, releasing them, then discredit those that used them (another H&W client, US Chamber of Commerce, wanted to go after activists, including investigation of their families; Powerpoint presentation started that Glenn Greenwald would cave to pressure in order to protect his career); [in 2008 CoC gave B of A its 2008 Corporate Citizen Award, even though it had just taken its first 25 billion dollars of the bailout; may have used B of A dues to screw over working people and target moderate Democratic Senators [lincoln?]

Summary: massively involved in financial crash, victimized the victims, bribed Congress to keep letting them do it, and pay themselves huge bonuses for wrecking the economy. Biggest investor in coal (building new plants, mountaintop removal). Hired private intelligence companies to spy on those who object. Chalk 13 years.

nomi prins 12/17 AN

https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one

...On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging student loan debt. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)

Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us.

But first, a recap. For the U.S. financial system, 2017 was marked by five main themes: The GOP’s “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” Corporate Tax Reduction Plan; Big Banks Still Bad; The Fed’s Minor Policy Shift; Debt; and Deregulators Appointed to Positions of Regulatory Authority.

Banks Are Still Big and Bad

The Big Six banks have paid billions of dollars in settlements for a variety of frauds committed before and since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but that didn’t keep them from tallying up new fines in 2017. The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, agreed to pay $53 million in fines for scamming African-American and Latino mortgage borrowers with disproportionately higher rates than for white borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Citigroup $28.8 million for not disclosing foreclosure-avoiding actions.Bank of America got fined $45 million for its foul treatment of a California couple trying to save their home.

But the Big Six bank that received the most attention in 2017, as it did in 2016, was Wells Fargo. The number of people affected by its fake-account creation scandal grew from 2 million reported in 2016 to about 3.5 million. That increase resulted in Wells Fargo expanding its associated class-action settlement to $142 million.

Wells Fargo was mired in smaller scandals, too. For instance, it charged 800,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need, raised mortgage rates for certain customers without properly disclosing it was going to, and made a bunch of unauthorized adjustments to people’s mortgages.

No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation

The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchin also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind American International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be paying penance for its role at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.

...

8/17

The fact is that banks do not have strong policies in place to ensure this downward trend accelerates. The only sector that has even halfway-decent policy safeguards is coal mining, in which many U.S. and European banks have made commitments to move away from the sector. Thanks to a six year long campaign by activists across the country, Bank of America was the first bank to adopt a policy to reduce its funding for coal mining—and though Bank of America’s overall extreme fossil fuel investment has increased over the past three years, their coal mining numbers have dropped. Remarkably, Bank of America was the number one funder of coal mining just five years ago.

my writeup from New book:

BANK OF AMERICA

In terms of political clout, probably a distant second behind Goldman Sachs and maybe Citi, but notable here b/c biggest bank in US (actually world with 2.3 trillion in assets[FleetBoston, which had already acquired a number of banks bought B of A, but continued to call it Bo f A: John Brown founder, Rhode Island slave trader] ), and by buying Merril Lynch became the biggest brokerage firm in 2009 (only to find it lost 15 billion the previous quarter, billions in executive bonuses, 87K ru, stock went from 33 dollars to less than 6.; asked for another 20 billion in bailouts when ML losses discovered; used some to lobby Congress on executive pay[ceo ken Lewis gets 34.8 million, 779 times the average teller pay], mortgage and credit card fee restrictions and consumer financial protection agency). and in two years invested 6.4 billion dollars in coal (RAN). CCA 20 million dollar loan; gouged SC unemployed. Huge lobbying (biggest of TARP recipients). 14 million in 2008.

…

Dec 2010 B of A joined other banks in refusing to handle Wikileaks donations.At this time it threatned to release bank info

B of A hired TEKSystem, amateur Facebook scrape and mainstream media ; report on Occupy and hackers.

Feb 2013 B of A cache posted by Anonymous (from a misconfigured server)

San Diego faced 13 years for chalk vandalization july 2013

AlterNet [1] / By Lynn Stuart Parramore [2]

Bank of America and Other Megabanks Say They Want to Make Nice With Poor People: Don't Buy It

July 24, 2014 |

How do we hate thee, Bank of America? Let us count the ways.

We hate thee for thy mortgage misdeeds, foreclosure frauds and grotesque fees. For unnecessarily kicking people out of their homes, extorting money from military families through predatory loan rates, and treating thy customers like garbage.

For basically being too-big-to-fail/too-big-to-jail blight on the economy and society thou hast proven to be, time and again.

Bank of America has earned itself the worst reputation [3] of any big lender in the U.S., and that is no small feat. The megabank has incurred so many legal costs for its various frauds and abuses, to the tune of billions [4], its profits have seen a dip. Whatever is a big bank to do?

Under increasing pressure from regulators and widely despised by the public, Bank of America now wants us to believe that it will make nice with poor people. In a recent report [5]in the New York Times, we learn that BofA and other giant banks are trying to launder their public images by talking about offering low-fee services to people who have been left out of the banking system. BofA has launched a banking account it claims is intended to prevent troubled customers from running up fees for overdrawing their balances.

That’s very interesting, because so far, its accounts have been designed to do the opposite, which is why a lot of poor people don’t have bank accounts in the first place.

BofA’s public campaign showing us its touchy-feely side involves asking low-income people to create collages representing their emotions about money. One image shows a woman who appears to be naked wearing nothing but words like “power,” “want” and “desire” scrawled across her skin.

Other banks like JPMorgan, are following suit with lower-cost prepaid debit cards, checking accounts and whatnot. As the Times points out, it’s a bit difficult to start cheering:

"It is hard not to be skeptical, particularly because the banks, most recently in the subprime housing crisis, have traditionally wrung vast profits from some of these same customers, who paid steep rates for loans and high fees on basic checking accounts.”

You can say that again.

So here’s the real deal. Under the scrutiny of regulators, these banks have gotten cautious, so they’re trotting out a couple of products that are somewhat less rapacious than their normal fare (nonsensical fees still apply, they’re just lower). We’re guessing that the minute the regulators turn the other way, many of these targeted low-income customers will find themselves hit by some unexpected fee hikes that will send them right back where they came from, the land of the unbanked.

That’s how things roll in the oliogopoly that is the American banking system, where customers have the illusion of choice, but in reality face an industry dominated by a few gigantic players who decide how much abuse they can get away with at any given time. Bank of America is sort of like the lead dog in a small pack of rabid animals constantly scouring the landscape for prey. Whatever it signals, the rest will do, and the most vulnerable customers will be ripped, chewed and spit out.

According to Mehrsa Baradaran [6], an assistant law professor at the University of Georgia, more than one out of four Americans either don’t have a bank account or do have one, but primarily rely on unscrupulous check-cashing storefronts, payday lenders, title lenders, or pawnshops to survive. In her view, the best option for them would be to do their banking through the U.S. postal system. Elizabeth Warren, and many other progressives, have gotten on board with this idea.

Sounds kind of odd, until you consider that the post office comes with several advantages and an infrastructure that makes it uniquely suited to this role. For example, it has branches in many low-income neighborhoods that were long ago abandoned by private banks. Also, people have a sense of familiarity and comfort with the postal service that they will never have with the likes of BofA or JPMorgan. Post offices already offer financial services like money orders, and postal banks could add things like savings accounts, debit cards and even simple loans, without relying on a profit model that takes advantage of people.

This is not a new idea. Baradaran notes that in 1910, President William Howard Taft created a government-backed postal savings system for recent immigrants and the poor, which lasted until 1967. Unfortunately, times changed as private banks got bigger and more powerful, and the poor were pretty much thrown to the financial wolves:

“By the 1990s, there were essentially two forms of banking: regulated and insured mainstream banks to serve the needs of the wealthy and middle class, and a Wild West of unregulated payday lenders and check-cashing joints that answer the needs of the poor — at a price.”

In a world in which cash is increasingly becoming obsolete, the poor urgently need financial services. But believing that giant banks operating in oligopolistic conditions and thinking of little beyond profit maximization are the answer is nothing more than a fairy tale. One that ends badly for those who can least afford to lose.

bank of america [8],

bank [9],

banking [10],

business [11],

Dow Jones Industrial Average [12],

Electronic commerce [13],

finance [14],

Financial economics [15],

georgia [16],

investment [17],

jpmorgan [18],

Mehrsa Baradaran [19],

payday loan [20],

Payment systems [21],

Person Career [22],

Person Location [23],

president [24],

Primary dealers [25],

Quotation [26],

Transactional account [27],

united states [28],

university of georgia [29],

William Howard Taft [30],

assistant law professor [31],

bank account [32],

bank accounts [33],

banks [34],

big bank [35],

big lender [36],

financial services [37],

low-fee services [38],

payday lenders [39],

the new york times [40],

The Times [41],

title lenders [42]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/bank-america-and-other-megabanks-say-they-want-make-nice-poor-people-dont-buy-it

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/lynn-stuart-parramore

[3] http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/06/25/its-official-bank-of-america-has-the-worst-reputat.aspx

[4] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/bank-america-takes-billion-litigation-hit-24579066

[5] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/offering-small-fees-banks-cater-to-low-income-customers/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/the-post-office-banks-on-the-poor.html

[7] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Bank of America and Other Megabanks Say They Want to Make Nice With Poor People: Don't Buy It

[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bank-america

[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bank-0

[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/banking-0

[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/business-0

[12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/dow-jones-industrial-average

[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/electronic-commerce

[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/finance-0

[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/financial-economics

[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/georgia-0

[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/investment-0

[18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/jpmorgan-0

[19] http://www.alternet.org/tags/mehrsa-baradaran

[20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/payday-loan

[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/payment-systems

[22] http://www.alternet.org/tags/person-career

[23] http://www.alternet.org/tags/person-location

[24] http://www.alternet.org/tags/president-0

[25] http://www.alternet.org/tags/primary-dealers

[26] http://www.alternet.org/tags/quotation

[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/transactional-account

[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/united-states

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/university-georgia

[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/william-howard-taft

[31] http://www.alternet.org/tags/assistant-law-professor

[32] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bank-account

[33] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bank-accounts

[34] http://www.alternet.org/tags/banks

[35] http://www.alternet.org/tags/big-bank

[36] http://www.alternet.org/tags/big-lender

[37] http://www.alternet.org/tags/financial-services-0

[38] http://www.alternet.org/tags/low-fee-services

[39] http://www.alternet.org/tags/payday-lenders-0

[40] http://www.alternet.org/tags/new-york-times-1

[41] http://www.alternet.org/tags/times-0

[42] http://www.alternet.org/tags/title-lenders

[43] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/345-justice/19571-massive-fraud-at-center-of-trial-against-bofa-over-us-mortgages

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314

3/13 rs

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

It's been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they'd be beneath your average street thug. Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers. It brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus, "robo-signed" evidence – a type of mass perjury that it helped pioneer. It hawked worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, draining them of hundreds of millions in value. And when it wasn't ripping off workers and pensioners, it was helping to push insurance giants like AMBAC into bankruptcy by fraudulently inducing them to spend hundreds of millions insuring those same worthless mortgages.

But despite being the very definition of an unaccountable corporate villain, Bank of America is now bigger and more dangerous than ever. It controls more than 12 percent of America's bank deposits (skirting a federal law designed to prohibit any firm from controlling more than 10 percent), as well as 17 percent of all American home mortgages. By looking the other way and rewarding the bank's bad behavior with a massive government bailout, we actually allowed a huge financial company to not just grow so big that its collapse would imperil the whole economy, but to get away with any and all crimes it might commit. Too Big to Fail is one thing; it's also far too corrupt to survive....

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314#ixzz2peBSFf4e

Bank Of America's Earnings Jump 70 Percent On Cost-Cutting

Anonymous has done it again. The loosely associated hacking collective, which has hacked everything from GoDaddy to religious organizations to government websites, the Pentagon and more, has released 16 gigabytes of data, code and software related to Bank of America, Bloomberg, ThomsonReutersand others, claiming that Bank of America had employed security firms to “spy and collect information on private citizens.”

One Anonymous subgroup, identifying itself as Par:AnoIA (aka Anonymous Intelligence Agency), issued a press release on Wednesday to discuss some of the details of the release.

“The source of this release has confirmed that the data was not acquired by a hack but because it was stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs,” Par:AnoIA said. “Looking at the data it becomes clear thatBank of America, TEKSystems and others (see origins of reports) gathered information on Anonymous and other activists' movement on various social media platforms and public Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels.”

The Anonymous collective said the data was actually retrieved from an open, insecure server in Tel Aviv, Israel,but also managed to obtain a full version of ClearForest’s text analyzing software called “OneCalais,” which was stored and openly accessible on the same server.

Anonymous Hacked By Bizarre Trolling Collective Rustle League

Among the leaked documents, Anonymous discovered that TEKSystems had compiled reports last year about hackers and so-called “cyber threats,” as well as online activity surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement.Anonymous dismissed all of this research as “sloppy, random and valueless.”

“Apparently a keyword list was used to match for items of interest on IRC, Twitter and other social media,” Par:AnoIA said. “While the list has over 10.000 [sic] entries only 1,125 keywords seem to be genuine, the rest are simply Wikipedia references.”

In addition to the overwhelming amount of “research” about Bank of America’s antagonists, theAnonymous group also discovered an extra 4.8 gigabytes of “detailed career and salary information of hundreds of thousands of executives and employees from various corporations all around the world.”Anonymous noted that the folder was named “Bloomberg,” while the entries were tagged with “reuterscompanycontent,” which could mean Bloomberg LP and/or Thomson Reuters could have been involved or targeted as well.

“What it was doing on the Israeli server is up to anyone’s guess,” Anonymous added.

But above all, Anonymous hopes to use this data dump to spotlight these misguided efforts to hamper online activism, but also show how corporations like Bank of America are paying for these operations to take place.

“We release the received files in full to raise awareness to this issue and to send a signal to corporations and Governments that this is unacceptable,” the Anonymous press release concluded

Anonymous recently hacked the Federal Reserve on Feb. 6, and threatened to publish private personal information about a number of Goldman Sachs employees on Valentine’s Day, but did not.

http://www.ibtimes.com/bank-america-hacked-anonymous-hackers-leak-secrets-about-executives-salaries-spy-activities-1107947#

December 18, 2010, 10:05 AM

Bank of America to Block Donations to WikiLeaks

Bank of America Corp. has joined several other financial institutions in refusing to handle payments for WikiLeaks, the latest blow to the secret-releasing organization's efforts to continue operating under pressure from governments and the corporate world.

The Charlotte-based bank's move adds to similar actions by Mastercard Inc. and PayPal Inc. Though previous moves have prompted reprisals by hackers, Bank of America's site is as well-protected as they come, security experts say.

Its site was problem-free through midafternoon Saturday.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the bank said in a statement Saturday. The move was first reported by The Charlotte Observer.

Latest Updates on WikiLeaks

CBSNews.com Special Report: WikiLeaks

Earlier this month, Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing technical problems at the MasterCard website after it ended its relationship with WikiLeaks. PayPal saw its website subject to an attack that slowed it down but did not significantly affect payments.

Bank of America's website offers access to customer accounts through its home page, but it could be a tough nut for hackers to crack, security experts say.

No financial institution can "fully keep the bad guys out," said Rich Mogull, an analyst and CEO with the security research firm Securosis. But he added that customers shouldn't worry about WikiLeaks supporters plundering their accounts, because the bank has plenty of practice in warding off hackers. Also, previous attacks in support of WikiLeaks haven't targeted customer accounts.

}:}:

"Bank of America, I can guarantee you, is one of the top targets in the world," Mogull said.

He also said the company probably confronts denial-of-service attacks regularly, too, and likely has strong defenses. "I'm not going to guarantee it's enough," he said. "It always depends on how big the attack is."

In such attacks, computers are harnessed — sometimes surreptitiously — to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

Reached by phone, Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri declined further comment to The Associated Press on Saturday.

WikiLeaks says it's preparing a release of information on banks, which could include documents it says it has on Bank of America.

WikiLeaks responded to Bank of America's announcement with a Twitter message urging supporters to stop doing business with the bank.

"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," WikiLeaks said in its posting Saturday. It also called on businesses to switch funds from the bank.

WikiLeaks has received increasing global attention for its leaks of sensitive government data as 2010 has gone on. In recent weeks, it has released parts of a cache of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department diplomatic cables from around the world.

The site has come under pressure from several directions besides the financial. Attorney General Eric Holder has said repeatedly a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks' release of the cables is under way.

Against this backdrop, Julian Assange, the 39-year-old globetrotting Australian who is the driving force behind WikiLeaks, is battling extradition from England to Sweden on charges of rape and molestation. He was released on bail in London on Thursday.

Speaking Saturday outside a supporter's mansion in eastern England, Assange called the case in Sweden a "travesty." He also claimed he and others working for WikiLeaks face significant risks.

"There is a threat to my life. There is a threat to my staff. There are significant risks facing us," he said, without offering details of the purported threats.

In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Assange said his organization plans to soon release information about banks, and he told Forbes magazine last month that the data would show "unethical practices."

Assange told Computerworld magazine in 2009 that his organization had a trove of files on Bank of America. "At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives. Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem," he was quoted as telling the magazine.

MON JUL 01, 2013 AT 01:40 PM PDT

Ding! San Diego Chalker Acquitted and Idiot Prosecutor Condemned by Mayor! Update - Ballad of JO!

byjpmassar Follow

Common sense and sanity prevailed - perhaps unexpectedly - in San Diego today. Now Bank of America can go back to defrauding America the old fashioned way, instead of demanding that the courts do their dirty work for them.

A 40-year-old man was acquitted Monday of 13 misdemeanor vandalism charges that stemmed from protest messages written in chalk in front of three Bank of America branches in San Diego.

Jeffrey David Olson's attorney argued during the trial -- which garnered national attention -- that his client was engaging in a legal protest and was not maliciously defacing of property.

The case made headlines and got lots of attention here on Daily Kos and in other blogs because of the ridiculousness of the possible penalty in contrast to the alleged "crime" of writing messages in easily removable chalk.

Olson could have faced up to 13 years behind bars if convicted of all counts. Jurors began deliberating Friday.

Apparently the jury decided that Olsen wasn't being malicious, whereas the statute says that the action must be so, and that makes good sense:

Defense attorney Tom Tosdal argued that vandalism law required jurors to find something was "maliciously defaced."

"His purpose was not malicious. His purpose was to inform," Tosdal said of his client.

And here's the sweet part...

The prosecution of Olson brought condemnation of the City Attorney's Office from Mayor Bob Filner, who called it a waste of time.

Unlike certain mayors who will not be named in Oakland and New York City, perhaps there is at least one sane one in these United States who doesn't think his or her City should be prosecuting peaceful protesters.

Update: Ballad of Jeff Olsen:

Can't get it to embed, even after adding the htt

Salon [1] / By David Dayen [2]

Bank of America Whistle-blower Bombshell: “We Were Told to Lie” to Rip Off Borrowers

June 18, 2013 |

Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification – but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements [3] were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.

“Bank of America’s practice is to string homeowners along with no apparent intention of providing the permanent loan modifications it promises,” said Erika Brown, one of the former employees. The damning evidence would spur a series of criminal investigations of BofA executives, if we still had a rule of law in this country for Wall Street banks.

The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which gave banks cash incentives to modify loans under certain standards, was supposed to streamline the process and help up to 4 million struggling homeowners (to date, active permanent modifications number about 870,000 [4]). In reality, Bank of America used it as a tool, say these former employees, to squeeze as much money as possible out of struggling borrowers before eventually foreclosing on them. Borrowers were supposed to make three trial payments before the loan modification became permanent; in actuality, many borrowers would make payments for a year or more, only to find themselves rejected for a permanent modification, and then owing the difference between the trial modification and their original payment. Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner famously described HAMP as a means to “foam the runway [5]” for the banks, spreading out foreclosures so banks could more readily absorb them.

These Bank of America employees offer the first glimpse into how they pulled it off. Employees, many of whom allege they were given no basic training on how to even use HAMP, were instructed to tell borrowers that documents were incomplete or missing when they were not, or that the file was “under review” when it hadn’t been accessed in months. Former loan-level representative Simone Gordon says flat-out in her affidavit that “we were told to lie to customers” about the receipt of documents and trial payments. She added that the bank would hold financial documents borrowers submitted for review for at least 30 days. “Once thirty days passed, Bank of America would consider many of these documents to be ‘stale’ and the homeowner would have to re-apply for a modification,” Gordon writes. Theresa Terrelonge, another ex-employee, said that the company would consistently tell homeowners to resubmit information, restarting the clock on the HAMP process.

Worse than this, Bank of America wouldsimply throw out documents on a consistent basis.Former case management supervisor William Wilson alleged that, during bimonthly sessions called the “blitz,” case managers and underwriters would simply deny any file with financial documents that were more than 60 days old. “During a blitz, a single team would decline between 600 and 1,500 modification files at a time,” Wilson wrote. “I personally reviewed hundreds of files in which the computer systems showed that the homeowner had fulfilled a Trial Period Plan and was entitled to a permanent loan modification, but was nevertheless declined for a permanent modification during a blitz.”Employees were then instructed to make up a reason for the denial to submit to the Treasury Department, which monitored the program. Others say that bank employees falsified records in the computer system and removed documents from homeowner files to make it look like the borrower did not qualify for a permanent modification.

Senior managers provided carrots and sticks for employees to lie to customers and push them into foreclosure. Simone Gordon described meetings where managers created quotas for lower-level employees, and a bonus system for reaching those quotas. Employees “who placed ten or more accounts into foreclosure in a given month received a $500 bonus,” Gordon wrote. “Bank of America also gave employees gift cards to retail stores like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond as rewards for placing accounts into foreclosure.” Employees were closely monitored, and those who didn’t meet quotas, or who dared to give borrowers accurate information, were fired, as was anyone who “questioned the ethics … of declining loan modifications for false and fraudulent reasons,” according to William Wilson.

Bank of America characterized [6] the affidavits as “rife with factual inaccuracies.” But they match complaints from borrowers having to resubmit documents multiple times, and getting denied for permanent modifications despite making all trial payments. And these statements come from all over the country from ex-employees without a relationship to one another. It did not result from one “rogue” bank branch.

Simply put, Bank of America didn’t want to hire enough staff to handle the crush of loan modification requests, and used these delaying tactics as a shortcut. They also pushed people into foreclosure to collect additional fees from them. And after rejecting borrowers for HAMP modifications, they would offer an in-house modification with a higher interest rate. This was all about profit maximization. “We were regularly drilled that it was our job to maximize fees for the Bank by fostering and extending delay of the HAMP modification process by any means we could,” wrote Simone Gordon in her affidavit.....

http://www.alternet.org/print/bank-america-0

27th February 2013

Miscreants affiliated withhacking collective Anonymoushave dumped online a huge cache of data supposedly lifted from insecure systems at a Bank of America contractor.

The self-styled Anonymous Intelligence Agency (Par:AnoIA) leaked 320MB of emails and other information that suggests the banking giant is running an online intelligence gathering operation against hacktivists.

The cache includes memos from IT contractor TEKsystems to the bank's security staff, reporting chat room and social network reconnaissance. The data dump also supposedly includes the source code for OpenCalais - a natural language processing (NLP) text analytics and data mining package fromThomson Reuterssubsidiary ClearForest. The story goes that the software was used to make sense of data harvested from chat rooms.

"We were amused by the fact that there are actually paid analysts sitting somewhere reading the vast amount garbage that scrolls by in large public channels like #anonops and #voxanon," Par:AnoIA said in a statement accompanying the leak. "Even more amusing is the keyword list that was found, containing trigger words like 'jihad' or 'homosexual'."

The Anons alleged that the "overall quality of the research is poor and potentially false".

"The data clearly shows that the research was sloppy, random and valueless. Apparently a keyword list was used to match items of interest on IRC, Twitter and other social media," it claimed in its announcement [PDF].

The released archives, totalling well over 6GB, apparently also include salary and bonus details on hundred of thousands of executives and employees from various corporations all around the world, including Google supremo Eric Schmidt - although his income is publicly known.

The Anonymous Intelligence Agency claimed the swiped records were lifted from a "misconfigured server" hosted in Israel that was "basically open for grabs" rather than seized using security exploits and conventional hacking. Par:AnoIA claimed it received the info wad via an unnamed source. How this handler got hold of the data - especially the salary information - remains unclear.

The information disclosure, dubbed Operation Keyword, was followed by the release of a rough'n'ready video by Anonymous in which the financial giant is accused of acting against the interests of US homeowners.

Bank of America has previously been linked to attempts to gather intelligence on members of Anonymous and associated organisations, most notably the proposals put forward by former HBGary Federal chief exec Aaron Barr.

Barr proposed a disinformation campaign against WikiLeaks in the run up to the planned publication of Bank of America documents by the whistle-blowing website. He also planned to expose members of Anonymous. In retaliation, members of the collective hacked into HBGary Federal's systems, defaced its website, took over Twitter accounts and exposed 68,000 emails, including a presentation put together by the company along and two other data intelligence firms for Bank of America in 2010

An Anonymous group, identifying itself as Par:AnoIA (aka Anonymous Intelligence Agency) has released 14 Gigabytes of data, code and software that it claims shows how Bank of America employed security firms to monitor hackers and activists.

In a Wednesday press release, Par:AnoIA stated that the data “shows that Bank of America and others are contracting other companies to spy and collect information on private citizens.” The release also notes, however, that the “overall quality of the research is poor and potentially false.”

The data was not obtained through any hack, but was “stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs.”

Leaked documents reveal that TEKSystems assembled reports on bothOccupy Wall Street online activityand hackers throughout 2012. But the hackers group called such “intelligence” “sloppy, random and valueless”:

Apparently a key word list was used to match for items of interest on IRC, Twitter and other social media. While the list has over 10.000 entries only 1125 keywords seem to be genuine, the rest are simply Wikipedia references.

This aspect of leaked information is reminiscent of internal DHS reports obtained revealing the agency’s monitoring of Occupy in late 2011. At the time I noted “my shock… at the cursory and complacent nature of the document. This is spying? The sources cited for Occupy information are almost entirely mainstream media reports (from the AP, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Reuters and others).”[confed fuck?]

FBI documents obtained earlier this year through FOIA by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund revealed that an FBI program specifically dedicated to the partnership between the FBI, DHS and the private sector monitored the Occupy protests, providing information and tips to corporate partners on interacting with and combating Occupy groups. salon botp

http://ran.org/bank-america

Over the past 2 years, Bank of America has invested more than $6.4 billion in coal. Bank of America is the biggest bank in the United States and the biggest underwriter of the coal industry -bankrolling coal mining, infrastructure investments and coal plants around the country. While Bank of America claims to support environmental responsibility, it continues to lead investments in coal, one of the biggest threats to public health and climate stability.

Over the past century, the Big Banks have accrued untold power only to use it to repeatedly drive the world’s economy to the brink of collapse. Now the biggest banks are threatening to take us to the edge of an ecological catastrophe if they don’t stop funding coal, the primary driver of climate change.

A bank stands behind almost every utility burning coal and every mining company razing the land. The mounting climate crisis demands that these institutions should not invest even one more dollar in coal. Over the past few years, the banking sector has come together on a several occasions to issue various sets of principles to help it move away from coal, only to find itself still unable to extricate itself from the coal industry for good.

Putting Banks On Notice

RAN is pushing the banking sector to cut financing to new and existing coal plants, extraction and infrastructure, as well as emphasizing the benefits of increasing funding to clean energy projects such as wind and solar. These technologies are ready right now to power our lives; all that we lack is the political will to make our clean energy future a reality.

In the next few years, cutting financing to key coal projects, and ending the projects themselves, will not only mean real and immediate reduction of polluting carbon emissions, but will also send a signal throughout the industry that King Coal’s days are numbered.

We have put the largest U.S. banks ‘on notice’ with the following demands:

No financing for companies pursuing new coal-fired power plants and life-extending retrofits of existing coal-fired power plants.
No financing for companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining.
No financing for companies pursuing coal export infrastructure.
Shift the balance of your energy financing to support power generation that is less threatening to our health and environment.

Putting Banks On Notice

We have put the largest U.S. banks ‘on notice’ with the following demands:

No financing for companies pursuing new coal-fired power plants and life-extending retrofits of existing coal-fired power plants.
No financing for companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining.
No financing for companies pursuing coal export infrastructure.
Shift the balance of your energy financing to support power generation that is less threatening to our health and environment.

Banks and Coal: The Carbon Principles

In 2008, three leading banks, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, announced a common coal power financing policy, known as the Carbon Principles. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Credit Swiss later joined them. According to the bank proponents, The Carbon Principles represented the first time “that financial institutions, advised by their clients and environmental advocacy groups, have jointly committed to advance a consistent approach to the issue of climate change in the US electric power industry.”

In hindsight, the Principles don’t stand for much at all. The banks comprise six of the top seven ranked banks in Bloomberg League Tables for underwriting and loans in the electric utility sector in the U.S. They also accounted for more than 55% of the $125 billion in loan and bond underwriting in the United States to the coal sector from the beginning of the Carbon Principles implementation date of August 4, 2008 through June 30, 2010.

In 2011, RAN evaluated the Carbon Principles and discovered that they have had almost no effect on the banking sector.

Banks and Coal: Beyond the Carbon Principles

Several other policies have emerged since the Carbon Principles that offer a more comprehensive approach to addressing climate change from both a frame of ecological and social responsibility, as well as addressing the economic risk posed by carbon-intensive investments.

The Equator Principles, which were created in 2003 to address “social and environmental risk in project financing,” and have since been signed by over 65 international banks. The Equator Principles are limited only to project finance specific financing arrangements, while the Carbon Principles are a framework looking at transactions that include corporate financing, bond issuance, and even advisory services.

The Climate Principles are a similar industry-wide framework, created in December 2008 by primarily European and international banks including Credit Agricole, HSBC, Munich Re, Standard Chartered, and Swiss RE. While similar to the Carbon Principles in terms of incorporating a risk analysis regarding carbon and climate into their due diligence protocols, the Climate Principles look more broadly at carbon-intensive aspects of their operations, clients, and transactions rather than only looking at coal-fired power plants. They also go beyond concern for immediate risk in a transaction, and also seek to address greenhouse gas impacts of their supply chain while explicitly acknowledging the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for collective societal action.

Learn More

Dirty Money: US Banks At the Bottom of the Class

From the cradle to the grave, coal is a risky business. Each stage in the life cycle of coal–extraction, transportation and combustion–presents increasing health, environmental, reputational, legislative and financial risks.

Bank of America: Risking Public Health and the Climate

As outrage at the country’s largest banks increases with the Occupy Movement and record bank customers move money to credit unions and local banks, RAN finds yet another reason customers should be wary of BoA. Our campaign briefing shines a light on the company as the country’s top financier of the coal industry, in turn, a leading contributor to climate change in the United States.

Banks and Coal: Beyond the Carbon Principles

$20 Mil line of credit to CCA kpfa alternet gauchi

rating lowered //greece?

http://www.alternet.org/story/154882/how_occupy_wall_street_plans_to_take_down_bank_of_america--and_how_you_can_help?page=entire

paid fine for rigging

http://www.alternet.org/story/154778/beyond_robosigning_3_other_ways_bank_of_america_is_screwing_americans?page=entire

collection agents w/ wrong info

3. Exploiting the unemployed to rake in fees

When South Carolina signed a deal with Bank of America to distribute unemployment benefits via prepaid debit cards, chances are the state was not actively trying to screw its unemployed citizens. But that is exactly what happened, because Bank of America took advantage of its contract with the state to exploit unemployed South Carolinians by charging many of them hefty fees to access their benefits.

Bank of America tops the list of the world’s largest banks.^[1] As of June 2010, the bank had $2.37 trillion in assets.^[2] It has the most extensive branch network in the US, being located in 30 states, and is the country’s biggest lender. By acquiring Merrill Lynch in 2009, Bank of America became the world’s largest brokerage firm. ^[3]

NOTE: For information on Bank of America's role in the financial crisis, see the subarticle Bank of America financial crisis.

Contents[hide]

Citizen action

March 2011: Activists target Portland, Oregon area Bank of America ATMs

Bank of America ATMs in Downtown Portland on March 1, 2011 were targeted by climate change activists in the area. Notices were placed on the ATMs which informed customers that the ATMs were “temporarily closed until in invests responsibly in renewable energy.” Bank of America was targeted for its financial support and investments in the practice of mountaintop removal.^[4]

Coal Train Visits Bank of America.

May 2011: Protests target banks in Portland, Oregon

On Friday, May 9th, 2011 two bank branches in downtown Portland, Oregon, one belonging to Bank of America and the other to Wells Fargo, were targeted by approximately 30 activists who showed up to protest the banks’ investments in coal projects. Both banks are major lenders to Arch Coal, the second biggest coal company in the United States. Arch Coal was targeted because, along with Ambre Energy, it is responsible for the proposed Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal near Longview, Washington. Arch Coal also owns the Otter Creek coal mine in Montana, which the company hopes to use as a source of coal to be exported.

Protesters assembled by Portland's Reed College entered the banks as mock coal export trains, which they believed will expose Northwest residents to coal dust, diesel fumes and noise pollution if the coal export facility near Longview becomes operational. A multi-car human ”coal train” entered the banks and marched around the bank's lobby, temporarily disrupting business inside. Climate activists chanted “Hey hey, B of A: Stop investing in coal today!” And later, “Hey hey, Wells Fargo: You say coal, we say no!”^[5]

August 2011: Fifteen arrested taking action against Peabody in St. Louis, Missouri

On August 15, 2011 fifteen people were arrested in St. Louis, Missouri while protesting the practices of Bank of America (BoA) and Peabody Energy. Over a hundred people marched in protest of BoA's coal investments and Peabody's coal mining activities. The arrests occurred in a downtown St. Louis intersection that connects Bank of America’s regional offices and Peabody’s world headquarters. The actions were carried out by Midwest Rising! Convergence, a group associated with Rising Tide North America.

Activist Scott Parking wrote, "Midwest Rising was a convergence for climate and economic justice that brought together a diverse coalition of groups fighting home foreclosures in cities like Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh,communications workers on strike against Verizon Wireless,local labor organizers, Appalachian activists fighting mountaintop removal and climate justice activists from around the world."^[6]

Controversies

Contribution to Financial Crisis

NOTE: For additional information on Bank of America's role in the financial crisis, see Bank of America financial crisis.

Trading Subprime Mortgage Securities

Although in 2001 Bank of America stopped issuing subprime mortgages, the bank continued to sell financial products backed by risky subprime mortgages issued by other lenders. A 2007 report of the mortgage-backed securities market showed that, of 17 firms selling securities backed by adjustable-rate jumbo mortgages, Bank of America had the worst delinquency rates.According to this report, “The performance illustrates one of the main causes of the U.S. foreclosure crisis: While lenders tended to be fairly careful with loans they planned to keep on their books, they took more chances with loans sold to investors. In one category of securities sold by Bank of America in 2007, 98 per cent of the underlying loans were made with reduced or no documentation of the borrowers' incomes.”^[7]

As the crisis in the subprime mortgage market began to unfold, Bank of America’s balance sheet suffered. In 2007, the bank posted a $3 billion loss on collateralized debt obligations^[8] related to the mortgage market. A report produced for the American Bar Association found that “While the Company did not issue subprime mortgages itself, it was still exposed to subprime losses through itsCDOs, complex debt instruments which were often backed, in part, by subprime mortgages. With mortgage defaults increasing, the value and risk related to these instruments could not be assessed.”^[9] ProPublica’s analysis of the 2008 financial crisis concludes that half of the trillion dollars that were lost – losses that in large part were covered by taxpayers - stemmed from CDOs. ^[10]^

In his January 13, 2010 testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ^[11]^ Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan largely blamed the crisis on the excessive leverage of investment banks; the lax regulation of mortgage lenders by state governments; and the political push to expand home ownership among disadvantaged groups. He said the crisis was not necessary, pointing to Bank of America’s 2001 decision to stop making subprime loans. He argued combining investment and commercial banking in one company was not a problem. In October 2007, as the bank was declaring losses on its trades in securities backed by subprime mortgages, Moynihan’s predecessor Ken Lewis had famously declared: “I've had all of the fun I can stand in investment banking at the moment.”^[12]

Moynihan did not comment on Bank of America’s role in packaging subprime loans and turning them into tradable securities, but did state that securitizing loans “reduced the incentives for some lenders to apply as strict credit underwriting standards for securitized loans than they may have applied if they were required to hold and service those loans in portfolio…” He argued nonetheless that securitization is essential to modern financial markets. Moynihan claimed that “No one involved in the housing system – lenders, rating agencies, investors, insurers, regulators or policy makers – foresaw a dramatic and rapid depreciation in home prices.”

The Service Employees International Union documents in its profile of Bank of America that post-crisis the bank still packages and sells subprime securities. In September 2009, for example, BOA underwrote $239 million worth of securities backed by subprime loans. ^[13]^

Trade in derivatives

According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Bank of America is one of the five banks that hold 97 percent of total derivatives^[14] in the US, holding $206.2 trillion worth.^[15] All of the largest derivative traders are banks that are considered too big to fail, so that their high risk derivative trading is done with the backing of taxpayers. Frank Partnoy, a former trader with Morgan Stanley, has argued that the 2008 financial crisis would not have been as extreme if not for the speculative derivative trades related to the housing market: “Without derivatives, the total losses from the spike in subprime mortgage defaults would have been relatively small and easily contained…Instead, derivatives multiplied the losses from subprime mortgage loans, through side bets based on credit default swaps. Still more credit default swaps, based on defaults by banks and insurance companies themselves, magnified losses on the subprime side bets.” ^[16]^

Although derivatives can be used to hedge risk, they can also produce extremely high profits or losses. Regulation of this aspect of the financial industry was central to proposed reforms so that derivative trading could not destabilize the entire economy again. According to Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson, Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln’s derivative reform proposal would have meant that “no longer would banks that our government backs up with deposit insurance and access to the Federal Reserve's discounted interest rates be able to put taxpayers on the hook for their speculative bets: They could either continue as derivative-trading casinos or as government insured banks, but not both.”^[17]

The largest US banks lobbied hard to defeat regulation of derivatives. Bank of America and other large derivative traders created a new lobbying organization, the Credit Default Swap Dealers Consortium to shape derivative regulation in a way that would be favorable to the banks. The Consortium was created in November 2008 just one month after a number of its members, including Bank of America, had been bailed out by the government. The New York Times reported that “the banks hired a longtime Washington power broker who previously helped fend off derivatives regulation.” His views “played a pivotal role in shaping the debate over derivatives regulation. ^[18]^ Bank lobbyists warned that US regulation could drive derivative markets offshore and decrease the availability of the credit needed to get the economy going.^[19]

Commenting on the $700 bailout the US government had provided to the financial industry through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told a Congressional committee that TARP was “an important step to restore confidence in our financial and prevent systemic consequences that would have affected every company and individual in the country.” Moynihan professed to the Congressional representatives that “We in the financial services industry are humbled that such support was needed, and grateful that it was provided.” ^[20]^ However, the aggressive lobbying by Bank of America and the other big banks to stave off regulation of derivatives suggests they were not chastened by the financial crisis.

Gary Gensler, Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said when questioned about the effort to regulate derivatives that “One thing I can confirm is that Wall Street has had many of their people -- lobbyists, and their people advocating against key parts of this reform. Sometimes I see them as I’m going into a senator’s office and somebody’s coming out… Bankers have a point of view because they want to protect their market. There are five large financial firms that are concentrated in this market, and they benefit and earn billions of dollars for their shareholders.” ^[21]^

Too Big to Fail and the Bailout

The implicit US government guarantee of TBTF institutions became explicit in October 2008 when Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made a public commitment “that the government would act to prevent the failure of any systemically important financial institution.”^[22] As part of the US government’s overall bailout for the banking industry, two bailout programs - the Systemically Significant Failing Institutions Program and the Targeted Investment Program - were created especially for Bank of America, Citibank and AIG because of what administration officials viewed as their critical role in the US economy.

In addition to the $25 billion Bank of America received from Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program in 2008, ^[23]^ the bank got an additional $20 billion in 2009 from the Targeted Investment Program (TIP) to enable it to take over Merrill Lynch. TIP was intended to “stabilize the financial system by making investments in institutions that are critical to the functioning of the financial system.” The program was supposed to invest government funds “to avoid significant market disruptions resulting from the deterioration of one financial institution that can threaten other financial institutions and impair broader financial markets and pose a threat to the overall economy.” ^[24]^

The U.S. Department of Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance, and the Federal Reserve also provided guarantees for $118 billion of Bank of America assets, committing taxpayers to take on 90% of Bank of America’s losses if the bank lost more than $10 billion. ^[25]^

The government did not discipline Bank of America and Citigroup in the same way as it did AIG, even though all three institutions were singled out for special treatment from the Treasury because of their significance to the economy. The Congressional Oversight Panel for the financial bailout noted in its December 2009 report that “Treasury required changes in senior management, and diluted the interests of shareholders when the government received a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG. By contrast, despite providing Bank of America and Citigroup with exceptional assistance, Treasury did not require them to make changes in management. Furthermore, it did not dilute shareholder interests in Bank of America. Treasury has not explained the rationale behind the differences in treatment.”^[26]

Bank of America repaid $45 billion to the US government in December 2009.^[27]

Merger mania

When Nationsbank took over Bank of America in 1998 – with the combined bank being called Bank of America – it was the largest bank acquisition in US history. The CEO of Bank of America at the time declared “Bigger is indeed better.” The combining of these two financial giants was just one example of what the Consumer Education Foundation describes as the “merger mania” that saw 11,500 US banks merge between 1980 and 2005.^[28]

Bank of America’s Too Big To Fail (TBTF) status when it was bailed out by the US government in 2008 was the result of a strategy of aggressive expansion.

Ken Lewis, who was CEO of Bank of America from 2001 until 2009, was criticized for empire building at the expense of shareholders.^[29] Bank of America took over FleetBoston for $47 billion in 2003^[30] FleetBoston itself was the result of a 1990’s wave of mergers of New England banks that ended up with FleetBoston being the seventh largest US bank when it was bought by Bank of America.^[31] In 2006 Bank of America acquired credit card giant MBNA for $34 billion to create the largest credit card company in the US.^[32] In 2008, it bought Countrywide, the largest US mortgage lender, for $2.8 billion. ^[33]^

The financial crisis has produced even bigger financial institutions, with the major banks being the big winners since they were able to buy out their competition and grow even larger. By 2009, Bank of America had grown to the point where its assets represented 16.4 % of US total gross domestic product.^[34]

In announcing Bank of America’s 2009 buyout of Merrill Lynch, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis emphasized the advantages such an enormous company would have: "Combining the leading global wealth management, capital markets and advisory firm with the largest consumer and corporate bank in the U.S. creates the world's premier financial services company with unrivalled breadth and global reach." ^[35]^

Criticisms of TBTF banks

In their book, Thirteen Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, Simon Johnson and James Kwak argue for the break up of the six largest US banks, including Bank of America. They define the “too big to fail” (TBTF) problem in the following way: “Certain financial institutions are so big, or so interconnected, or otherwise so important to the financial system that they cannot be allowed to go into an uncontrolled bankruptcy; defaulting on their obligations will create significant losses for other financial institutions, at a minimum sowing chaos in the markets and potentially triggering a domino effect that causes the entire system to come crashing down.” ^[36]^

Economists Simon Johnson and James Kwak identify four main threats to the economy posed by TBTF banks:

1) When these institutions are threatened by bankruptcy, the government has to bail them out. Creditors can demand the government compensate them in full for the loans they have made to the bank because they know there is no credible threat that the government will allow it to fail.

2) TBTF institutions have incentives to take big risks for the potential of high rewards with the certainty that they will be bailed out by taxpayers if they run into trouble. Johnson and Kwak point out that “Ordinarily, creditors should refuse to lend money to a bank that takes on too much risk; but if creditors believe that the government will protect them against losses, they will not play this supervisory function.” ^[37]^

3) TBTF have an unfair competitive advantage because with their implicit government guarantee they can borrow at lower rates than smaller banks.

4) Regulatory efforts to minimize high risk behavior will tend to be blocked due to the political power TBTF banks wield. Johnson and Kwak predict continuing financial crises if the response to the 2008 crisis does not include breaking up TBTF banks. They state: “solutions that depend on smarter, better regulatory supervision and corrective action ignore the political constraints on regulation and the political power of the large banks.” ^[38]^

While some financial institutions disappeared during the financial crisis, others like Bank of America emerged larger and even more powerful. Returning the big banks to profitability has been a strategy of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to restore financial stability.

CEO Brian Moynihan acknowledged when he testified before Congress that the financial industry had “caused a lot of damage.” But he argued that while the big banks had been bailed out by the government, they had paid back their bailout money in full and had not “imposed any losses on taxpayers.” Moynihan clamed there would be costs to the US if the government tried to limit the size of banks, with losses of economies of scale and the ability of US banks to compete internationally. He warned that overly simple reforms could “end up hamstringing the U.S. financial system and economy...” ^[39]^

Takeover of Countrywide

In August 2007 Bank bought a stake in Countrywide Financial Corporation even though by that date, because of the rapid deterioration in the housing market, no financial institution would loan Countrywide money secured by its mortgage assets. ^[40]^ Bank of America made a deal in January 2008 to purchase Countrywide outright. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis commented at the time that Countrywide was “really - at the grass-roots level -a very well-run mortgage company.” ^[41]^ Two weeks later, Countrywide posted losses of $422 million. ^[42] Bank of America subsequently dropped the name “Countrywide Home Loans” from the mortgage operation it took over and rebranded its consolidated mortgage division as “Bank of America Home Loans”.^[43]

As part of its rescue of the financial system, the Federal Reserve set up a special investment vehicle named“Maiden Lane LLC”to buy risky assets and remove them from the balance sheets of financial institutions. Included in Maiden Lane’s purchases are $618.9 million worth of securities backed by Countrywide mortgages that were granted with little borrower documentation. These mortgages are now rated far below investment grade, and the government is unlikely to recover all of the money it invested in them. ^[44]^

In June 2008, the State of Illinois sued Countrywide alleging that it had committed fraud against borrowers through deceptive lending practices. ^[45]^ At the same time, California’s Attorney General also sued Countrywide, accusing the company of causing thousands of foreclosures and creating "mortgage instruments that did great harm to individuals and the community.” Despite the evidence of troubles at Countrywide, Bank of America stuck to its plan to acquire the mortgage lender and the deal went through in June 2008.^[46]

To settle the lawsuits with Illinois, California and eight other states, Countrywide as part of Bank of America came up with an $8.4 billion loan relief plan for those holding Countrywide mortgages. In June 2010 Bank of America paid $108 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission case that charged Countrywide with having extracted excessive fees out of borrowers facing foreclosure. Bank of America paid $600 million and Countrywide’s auditor KPMG paid another $24 million in August 2010 to settle shareholder claims that Countrywide had concealed the riskiness of its lending standards. ^[47]

New problems stemming from its Countrywide acquisition continue to plague Bank of America. In June, 2010 the State of Illinois sued Countrywide again, this time over racial discrimination in its lending practices. A state study concluded that minorities were charged more in fees and were steered towards subprime loans more often than white borrowers in similar situations. State Attorney General Lisa Madigan stated when she launched the suit that: “Countrywide’s illegal discriminatory lending practices destroyed the wealth and dreams of thousands of African American and Latino homeowners. Bank of America needs to be held accountable by taking financial responsibility for cleaning up the devastation of the predatory company that it chose to take over.” ^[48]^

Takeover of Merrill Lynch

Bank of America acquired the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch for $50 billion in January 2009. ^[49]^ After the acquisition went through it was revealed that Merrill Lynch had lost $15.8 billion in the last quarter of 2008, that billions of dollars in bonuses had been paid out early to key Merrill staff, and that former Merrill CEO John Thain had spent lavishly during the crisis on decorating his office – such as when he paid $87,000 for a rug. Bank of America stock plummeted from $33 a share before the deal went through to a low of $5.50 in the weeks that followed. ^[50]

At the time of the financial crisis, Merrill Lynch had two main operations, a profitable wealth-management company with 17,000 financial advisers and a trading company that invested in “high-risk, high-return securities backed by subprime home mortgages.” In 2007, Merrill had to write down $8.4 billion because of the declines in house prices and increases in foreclosures. In 2008, it sold off $31 billion of securities at huge losses with the strategy of isolating the firm from the housing crisis. ^[51]^

Merrill was accused of not being open about the extent of its exposure to the subprime lending housing market and of concealing this exposure through off-balance sheet devices. In October 2007 Merrill reported its investment in the subprime market was $15 billion but only three months later revealed the figure was closer to $46 billion. ^[52]^

When the scale of Merrill Lynch’s losses became known, Bank of America was able to convince the Treasury Department to provide an additional $20 billion in bailout funds for its takeover of Merrill Lynch to proceed. Yet weeks before the deal went through Merrill had given out $3.6 billion in bonuses ahead of the normal schedule, with four top executives alone getting $121 million. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has said that “One disturbing question that must be answered is whether Merrill Lynch and Bank of America timed the bonuses in such a way as to force taxpayers to pay for them through the deal funding.”^[53] The Wall Street Journal reported that Bank of America had a private bonus agreement with Merrill that would have allowed for bonus payments of $5.8 billion.^[54]

Cuomo has filed fraud charges against Bank of America for not revealing to its shareholders the extent of Merrill Lynch losses and for misleading the federal government in order to get the additional $20 billion in bailout money. Cuomo called Bank of America’s behavior “just egregious and reprehensible." ^[55]^ The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Bank of America for not disclosing to its shareholders before they voted to approve the acquisition the extent of Merrill Lynch’s losses and the $3.6 billion accelerated payment of bonuses. District court Judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve the original $33 million settlement agreed to by the SEC and Bank of America, and he reluctantly approved it only after the penalty was increased to $150 million.

In reviewing the settlement, Rakoff harshly criticized the SEC for being too lenient, saying Bank of America’s punishment was “"half-baked justice at best.” Rakoff expressed concern that the SEC settlement was unlikely to dissuade other corporate executives from doing the same thing, since the settlement involved "very modest punitive, compensatory, and remedial measures that are neither directed at the specific individuals responsible for the nondisclosures nor appear likely to have more than a very modest impact on corporate practices or victim compensation.” The judge stated that the settlement "penalizes the shareholders for what was, in effect if not in intent, a fraud by management on the shareholders."^[56]

Merrill Lynch and investment bank leverage

In 1975, the SEC’s trading and markets division ruled that investment banks must maintain a debt-to-net capital ratio of less than 12 to 1. In 2004, following extensive lobbying by the investment banks, the SEC under chairman Christopher Cox authorized five investment banks to develop their own net capital requirements. This enabled investment banks to push borrowing ratios to as high as 40 to 1.^[57] These five investment banks were Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. This very high debt-to-reserves helped lead to the financial crisis of 2008 by weakening the ability of these institutions to recover from losses incurred when the risky CDO and CDS bets failed.^[58][59]

Lee A. Pickard, who had been Director of the SEC’s Division of Market Regulation when the 1975 12-1 rule was ordered, said of the change, "The SEC modification in 2004 is the primary reason for all of the losses that have occurred."^[60]

At the time of its purchase by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch was leveraged at a ratio of 35.5 to 1.^[61]

Profiting from the AIG bailout

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) has sharply criticized the handling of the bailout of insurance giant AIG. In a November 2009 report, SIGTARP concluded that “the very design of the federal assistance to AIG” meant that “tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties.” According to SIGTARP, “by providing AIG with the capital to make these payments, Federal Reserve officials provided AIG’s counterparties with tens of billions of dollars they likely would not have received had AIG gone into bankruptcy.” Federal Reserve officials refused to use their influence to get the banks to take some losses on their AIG deals, although they knew that their $85 billion bailout of AIG would immediately be used to pay off AIG counterparties and not to restore the viability of the insurance company. In calculating the ultimate costs to taxpayers of bailing out the banks, SIGTARP argues that the bailout of AIG should be included.^[62]

Bank of America was one of banks that got paid with government bailout funds for its deals with AIG. Newsweek reported in January 2010 that “AIG did end up funneling significant bailout money to U.S. banks that had already been bailed out themselves under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. As AIG counterparties, Goldman Sachs got $12.9 billion, Bank of America got $5.2 billion, and Citigroup got $2.3 billion.” ^[63]^

Bailout

Bailout amounts

Bank of America received $45 billion^[64] in direct government aid from the TARP program, and a further $118 billion worth of guarantees against bad assets^[65].

Use of bailout funds for lobbying

After receiving government funds, Bank of America continued to spend millions of dollars to lobby Congress, including to "fend off restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees" as well as in opposition to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency^[66]. They also hosted efforts to defeat the Employee Free Choice act^[67].

Other controversies

Credit cards

Bank of America, together with Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, hold sixty percent of credit card balances in the US. “Card Game”, a joint investigation by Frontline and the [[New York Times], found that deregulation of consumer lending had permitted industry practices that trapped many credit card holders in an endless cycle of debt. Credit card debt contributed to the housing crisis as homeowners were refinancing their homes in order to pay off accumulated credit card balances. The most lucrative clients for credit card companies are those who tend to be late on their payments. In an interview for the Frontline investigation, Professor Elizabeth Warren commented: “This is one of the dark secrets in this industry. People who are operating closer to the margin, those are the people who get trapped. Those are the people who produce the enormous revenues in the system.”

Lack of fair disclosure was highlighted in the Frontline investigation as a serious problem with credit card promotions. Using a Bank of America credit card application advertizing a “0% APR” as an example, Frontline asked a credit card industry executive to figure out what interest rate he would actually pay. Even after reading the fine print, the expert said he would not know the rate he would pay until the card was approved.^[68]

The Pew Center researched credit cards of the largest US banks, and found that they all involved “’hair trigger’ penalty interest rate increases on existing balances for minor account violations, unfair payment allocation and imposition of overlimit fees without consent.” These practices were the targets of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act passed in 2009. The Pew Center concluded that this Act had generally been successful in achieving its goals, with credit card holders reporting that they had seen improvements in their card accounts after the Act had passed. ^[69]^

Cardhub.com evaluates Bank of America and other credit card companies in terms of their fees at: http://education.cardhub.com/penalty-apr-study-june-2010/

Executive pay

At the Congressional hearings into the financial crisis, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan stated that “We understand the anger felt by many citizens because institutions that received federal investments 15 months ago are now recovering and pay their employees reflect this recovery [sic], especially in investment banking and trading areas.” Moynihan said that “the vast majority of our employees played no role in the economic crisis”, “we believe our 300,000 employees are a valuable part of our future”, and “we need to pay them competitively to ensure that we can keep them so they can help our clients.” ^[70]^

Bank tellers at Bank of America, who did not “play a role in the economic crisis”, receive a median wage of $10.73/hour, or $22,328 annually. In contrast, former CEO Ken Lewis’ pay for 2007-2008 was $34.8 million, or 779 times the median teller wage. ^[71]^

Investment bankers, some of the same ones that worked at Merrill Lynch in 2008 when it lost $27.6 billion and had to be rescued with a taxpayer bailout, may be granted the same bonuses in 2010 by Bank of America as they made in 2007. By repaying its government bailout in December 2010, Bank of America escaped from the executive pay restrictions that the federal government had imposed as a condition of the bailout. ^[72]^ Two former senior Merrill Lynch executives decided to join Bank of America once the pay restrictions had been lifted. ^[73]^ The concern is that the extravagant bonus system for executives and traders of recent years contributed to the financial crisis by encouraging high risk strategies, with taxpayers picking up the costs when these strategies failed.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office has investigated Bank of America’s compensation practices, and discovered that while in 2008 Bank of America net income fell to $4 billion from $14 billion, compensation stayed at $18 billion. ^[74]^

An Ipsos poll in January 2010 revealed that 60% of those who responded said executive pay and compensation were among their top five economic concerns.^[75]

Coal issues

Summary	Summary
Bank of America's investment in coal power Bank of America is one of the largest investors in the coal sector and has lent billions of dollars to companies seeking to build new coal-fired power plants. The company's clients include the major players in the power and utility industry. Bank of America has also financed billions of dollars to companies that practice mountaintop removal coal mining, a technique that blasts off the tops of mountains to reach the underlying coal deposits. Protests nation-wide against Bank of America's support for coal From 2007 to 2009, Bank of America has been the target of more than two dozen protests over its financing of the coal industry. Protests have taken place in California, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Groups organizing the protests including Mountain Justice, Rainforest Action Network, Coal River Mountain Watch, Appalachian Voices, Rising Tide North America, Mountain Justice Summer, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Energy Justice Network, Blue Ridge Earth First!, Rising Tide North America, Rising Tide Boston, City Life/Vida Urbana and Everglades Earth First!. BofA cuts some support for coal In December 2008, Bank of America announced a new investment policy to promote the "responsible use of coal." The policy involves phasing out financing for companies whose "predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal" but increasing the financing of carbon capture and storage (carbon sequestration)." The former was praised by environmental groups but the latter was condemned. In March 2007, Bank of America announced a $20 billion initiative to "support the growth of environmentally sustainable business activity to address global climate changes." However, the Rainforest Action Network said that less than 2 percent of the assets were committed to fighting global warming and was still significantly invested in the coal industry. Main article: Bank of America and Coal

Summary

Bank of America's investment in coal power

Bank of America is one of the largest investors in the coal sector and has lent billions of dollars to companies seeking to build new coal-fired power plants. The company's clients include the major players in the power and utility industry. Bank of America has also financed billions of dollars to companies that practice mountaintop removal coal mining, a technique that blasts off the tops of mountains to reach the underlying coal deposits.

Protests nation-wide against Bank of America's support for coal

From 2007 to 2009, Bank of America has been the target of more than two dozen protests over its financing of the coal industry. Protests have taken place in California, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Groups organizing the protests including Mountain Justice, Rainforest Action Network, Coal River Mountain Watch, Appalachian Voices, Rising Tide North America, Mountain Justice Summer, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Energy Justice Network, Blue Ridge Earth First!, Rising Tide North America, Rising Tide Boston, City Life/Vida Urbana and Everglades Earth First!.

BofA cuts some support for coal

In December 2008, Bank of America announced a new investment policy to promote the "responsible use of coal." The policy involves phasing out financing for companies whose "predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal" but increasing the financing of carbon capture and storage (carbon sequestration)." The former was praised by environmental groups but the latter was condemned. In March 2007, Bank of America announced a $20 billion initiative to "support the growth of environmentally sustainable business activity to address global climate changes." However, the Rainforest Action Network said that less than 2 percent of the assets were committed to fighting global warming and was still significantly invested in the coal industry.

Main article: Bank of America and Coal

Slavery reparations lawsuit

In March 2002, FleetBoston - bought by BofA in 2004 - along with insurance company Aetna and railroad company :{CSX:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Transportationwere named in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York "seeking damages for abuses suffered by slaves and accusing the companies of profiting from slavery". FleetBoston traces its roots back to a bank started by John Brown, a notorious Rhode Island slave trader. ^[76]^

Ad boycott against Air America Radio

Bank of America refused to advertise on the progressive Air America Radio. In October 2006, around 90 companies, including Bank of America, told ABC Radio Networks that they did not want their ads to play on radio stations that carried Air America Radio. ^[77]^ ^[78]^ ^[79]^

Involvement in March of Dimes

The March of Dimes has funneled millions into animal testing on primates, rats, mice, cats, dogs, rabbits, pigs, sheep, guinea pigs and opossums. They include nicotine, alcohol and cocaine addiction experiments; sensory deprivation and transplanting organs from one species to another. ^[80]^ Bank of America is a corporate donor to March of Dimes. ^[81]^ See also March of Dimes.

Personnel

Senior Management

Brian T. Moynihan - President & CEO
Catherine P. Bessant - Global Technology & Operations
David C. Darnell - President, Global Commercial Banking
Barbara J. Desoer - President, Home Loans
Anne M. Finucane - Global Strategy & Marketing Officer
Charles O. Holliday, Jr. - Chairman
Sallie L. Krawcheck - President, Global Wealth & Investment Management
Thomas K. Montag - President, Global Banking & Markets,
Charles H. Noski - CFO
Ed O’Keefe - General Counsel
Joe L. Price - President, Consumer & Small Business Banking
Andrea B. Smith - Global Human Resources Executive
Bruce Thompson - Chief Risk Officer^[82]

Board of Directors

Charles O. Holliday, Jr., (62) - Chairman
Susan S. Bies, (63) - Former Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
William P. Boardman, (69) - Retired Vice Chairman, Bank One; Retired Chairman, Visa International
Frank P. Bramble, Sr. (62) - Former Executive Officer, MBNA Corporation
Virgis W. Colbert, (70) - Senior Advisor, Miller-Coors Company
Charles K. Gifford, (67) - Former Chairman, Bank of America
D. Paul Jones, Jr., (67) - Former Chairman, CEO & President, Compass Bancshares, Inc.
Monica C. Lozano, (54) - CEO, ImpreMedia, LLC
Thomas J. May, (63) - Chairman, President & CEO, NSTAR
Brian T. Moynihan, (50) - CEO & President, Bank of America
Donald E. Powell, (69) - Former Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Charles O. Rossotti, (69) - Senior Advisor, Carlyle Group
Robert W. Scully, (60) - Former Member, Office of the Chairman, Morgan Stanley^[83]

Earnings and bonuses

2009 Numbers

According to Bloomberg News, Bank of America paid out $4.4 billion in bonuses in 2009, which is an average of a $400,000 bonus. ^[84]^ Approximately 95% of this bonus payout will be paid as stock vesting over three years.

2008 Numbers

According to a report by the Attorney General of New York State Bank of America paid $3.3 billion in bonuses to executives and employees^[85] while earning $4 billion after being a recipient of TARP bailout funds of $45 billion.

Breakdown of Bank of America 2008 bonuses from the Attorney General's report:

Top four recipients received a combined $64.01 million.
The next four received $36.85 million.
The next six received $31.39 million.
Number that received more than $10 million: 4
Number that received more than $8 million: 8
Number that received more than $5 million: 10
Number that received more than $3 million: 28
Number that received more than $2 million: 65
Number that received at least $1 million: 172^[86]

In addition, in 2008 Bank of America purchased Merrill Lynch. According to the report by the Attorney General of New York State Merrill Lynch paid $3.6 billion in bonuses to executives and employees^[87] while losing $27.6 billion after being a recipient of TARP bailout funds of $10 billion.

Breakdown of Merrill Lynch 2008 bonuses from the Attorney General's report:

Top four recipients received a combined $121 million.
The next four received: a combined $62 million.
The next six received: a combined $66 million.
Number of individuals that received more than $10 million: 14
Number that received more than $8 million: 20
Number that received more than $5 million: 53
Number that received more than $3 million: 149
Number that received at least $1 million: 696^[88];

Political contributions

1st Quarter 2010 Campaign Contributions: $391,500; 41% to Democrats, 59% to Republicans ^[89]

Decade-long campaign contribution total (1998-2008): $11,292,260^[90]

In 2008 Bank of America led the list of TARP recipients in political contributions and lobbying, spending $14.5 million^[91]. The amounts were $5,752,630 in political contributions and $8,790,000 for lobbying.

These numbers do not include the fourth quarter of 2008.

The 2008 top recipients of campaign contributions were:

Barack Obama (D) $230,552
John McCain (R) $126,175
Hillary Clinton (D) $106,071
Rudy Giuliani (R) $69,050
Chris Dodd(D) $63,100^[92]

James H. Hance Jr., then Vice Chair of Bank of America, was a Bush Ranger having raised at least $200,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Two more Bush Rangers in the top leadership were Charles M. Cawley, Ex-Chief Executive Officer of MBNA and Lance Loring Weaver, Executive Vice Chair of MBNA. ^[93]^

Bank of America gave $1,167,222 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election period through its three political action committees - 34% to Democrats, 65% to Republicans, and 1% to other parties. ^[94]^ ^[95]^ ^[96]^

Lobbying

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lobbying Expenditure Total for 2009: $3,570,000 ^[97]^

Decade-long lobbying expenditure total (1998-2008): $28,635,440^[98]

In 2008 Bank of America led the list of TARP recipients in political contributions and lobbying, spending $14.5 million^[99]. The amounts were $5,752,630 in political contributions and $8,790,000 for lobbying.

2008 Top Lobbying Expenditure Recipients:^[90]

1.Bank of America $4,090,000

2.King & Spalding $480,000

3.Quinn, Gillespie & Assoc $360,000

4.Smith-Free Group $250,000

5.Bryan Cave Strategies $160,000

The company spent $3,366,014 for lobbying in 2006. $1,380,000 went to eight outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists. Lobbying firms included Quinn Gillespie & Associates and Covington & Burling. ^[100]^

Revolving door influence

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Bank of America 100 N. Tryon Street

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Phone: 704-386-5681

Fax: 704-386-6699

Web address: http://www.bankofamerica.com

Articles & sources

SourceWatch articles

References

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/22/too_crooked_to_fail_matt_taibbi

A group of consumer advocates is pressing the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Financial Stability Oversight Council to use the power the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law granted them.

"Bank of America currently poses a grave threat to U.S. financial stability by any reasonable definition of that phrase," the 24-page petition said.

It said Bank of America, the nation's second-largest bank, is too large and complex, and that its financial condition could deteriorate rapidly at any moment, potentially causing the market to lose confidence in the bank.

"An ensuing run on the bank could cause a devastating financial crisis," the petition said.

That was precisely why this provision, Section 121, was included in Dodd-Frank, containing systemic risk provisions that allow federal regulators to order a "too big to fail" institution that posts a “grave threat” to basically shrink, to divest and to curtail its financial activities. The primary challenge is going to be getting these regulators to do this particular job, since the law also makes this action discretionary on their part.

Posted: June 12, 2009 02:04 PM

U.S. Chamber of Commerce <3s Bank of America

Yesterday the U.S. Chamber of Commerce saw fit to stand up for Bank of America's disgraced ex-Chairman and current CEO Ken Lewis. Lewistestified to the House Oversight Committee about the bank's purchase and subsequent bleeding of Merrill Lynch.

It's no secret that Ken Lewis set his sights on expanding Bank of America's reach as far as it can go - BofA bought Merrill Lynch despite the firm losing $35 billion in the previous two years. The House committee held the hearing to investigate the acquisition, which allegedly led to Bank of America needing another $20 billion bailout at the end of 2008.

So despite the obvious public image problems of Bank of America, and Ken Lewis's feet being halfway out the door of BofA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to stick up for both Lewis and BofA. The Chamber writes:

Exploring the facts should shed light on the actions of all parties at a critical juncture in the history of our capital markets, and demonstrate that despite circumstances regarding the deal's execution, had BofA not purchased Merrill Lynch, instability in the financial system at the time could have been far worse.

Ah yes. "Circumstances regarding the deal's execution." That's probably Chamber-speak for "failing to disclose $12 billion in losses." You know, no biggie. That's chump change over at the Chamber.

This isn't the first time the U.S. Chamber has stuck up for its buddies at Bank of America. At the end of last year, while the economy collapsed and BofA took on its first $25 billion bailout, the U.S. Chamber saw fit to honor Bank of America with its "2008 Corporate Citizenship Award." Because nothing says "Corporate Citizenship" like milking taxpayers for unprecedented billions.

Of course, there's also the little matter of failing to say whether or not the U.S. Chamber is using Bank of America's bailout money to fight working families. Politico reports:

Adam Green over at OpenLeft pushes the Chamber of Commerce to say that they're still accepting dues from bailed-out companies.

The goal is to make the case that the Chamber is using taxpayer dollars to help fund their anti-EFCA campaign (of which they have launched new ads targeting moderate Democratic senators).

The Chamber's Brad Peck says they're not using bail-out money for the campaign.

I've asked how exactly they know that to be the case.

Crickets from the Chamber since then.

So, U.S. Chamber of Commerce: are you using Bank of America's bailout, or any other bailout for that matter, to fund the fight for your legislative priorities?

We'll wait patiently for a response. In the meantime, we'll keep up the fight to hold Bank of America - and the U.S. Chamber - accountable to the American taxpayers.