How Green is Your Bankster? Bank of America spends $50 billion to save the world.

Bank of America Pledges $50 Billion to Combat Climate Change

The unholy alliance between bankers and government is on naked display.

It’s the black hole in the kitchen: huge, obvious, and silent. And boy does it suck. As Climate Depot points out, Bank of America got a $45 billion bailout from the government during the global financial crisis. Now it’s promising $50 billion to “address Climate Change”. How Green is your Bankster?

It’s a feeding frenzy:

The bank’s new initiative includes lending, equipment finance, capital markets and advisory activity and carbon finance, as well as advice and investment help.

Bank of America will focus on promoting energy efficiency; renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydropower; lower-carbon transportation like electric and hybrid vehicles; and water and waste treatment and disposal initiatives. [Capitalgr]

They already spend nearly $20bn on climate and did it four years ahead of schedule. So why not $5obn?

The company has spent $17.9 billion toward its initial pledge, including $8.4 billion for energy efficiency activities, including low-cost loans and grants for retrofitting low-income neighborhoods for energy efficiency. It spent $5 billon on renewable energy projects, including helping the San Jose Unified […]

Can your bank delete you? It’s almost like the start of an American social credit system.

Imagine Laura was a candidate for a major political party and had 150 million impressions a month on her twitter account. What happens if her bank and then Twitter delete her accounts. They give no real reason. She’s stranded, and spends a month writing letters and making phone calls, and setting up alternatives. After a month, the bank gives her a cheque for her savings. She got her money, but she lost a month.

Imagine accidents like these happen a lot more often to people on one side of politics — people who want to break the Tech Giants up?

h/t David E

How corporations can delete your existence, by Gavin Haynes.

Let’s call her Laura. In September, Laura was out in Leeds City Centre, buying some bits, when her card was declined. Funny, she thought. She definitely wasn’t in the red. But these things happen, so she left the shop, tinting crimson, and dashed towards the nearest cashpoint.

But her card wouldn’t work at the cashpoint either. She tried another one. With the same result.

Laura opened the banking app on her phone. It said only ‘error’, then automatically closed.

She finally abandoned her shopping and went into the […]

Ford backs away from electric vehicles: Americans just don’t want EV’s

By Jo Nova

It’s just another day in the death of the early 21st Century EV bubble

The fantasy of battery powered vehicles that also fix the weather was foisted upon the people by Big Government. But all the regulatory wands in the world, and even billions in free gifts don’t make a market appear when the product is a dog.

EV’s are meant to be storming the market on their way to domination. But in the UK the market share of EV’s rose only 3.8% last month but the whole car market grew by 10% — so EV’s are in danger of becoming a shrinking part of the UK car fleet. Plug-in hybrids saw a 37% increase.

The EV experiment has gone so very wrong. Last year Ford was the number 2 EV brand in the US, but it was hit with the $4.5 billion dollar black hole of fiscal carnage, losing $38,000 on every single EV. Obviously, something had to change, and now months later, Ford is abandoning plans to bring in two new EV models, and retool their EV manufacturing plants. Instead, it is shifting to hybrid vehicles — copying the Toyota plan.

EVs have crashed […]

It’s War: 19 US States fight back against the Woke Banker Cartel

 

By Jo Nova

Oklahoma blacklists BlackRock and 12 other banks that boycott fossil fuels

We may yet be saved by states in the US that are pulling the pin on the Big Banker Cartel. In this case Oklahoma wrote laws to investigate and ban state investments with banks that boycott the energy sector. They’ve now decided that 13 banks fail the bar, and should be banned from all public business. In response BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are now dancing to a whole new tune, suddenly protesting that they invest billions in the energy sector. The twisted truth is, that it is no defense at all, it was part of their strategy. Often they used their major voting interest to oust directors and pressure boards to pick up more “woke” ESG policies. These are big targets. JP Morgan Chase is the largest bank in the US and BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world.

This is excellent news, and we need more. Spread the news. But how did it get to the point where a bank that outspokenly campaigned to end fossil fuels was managing 60% of the state employees retirement funds in a state that is […]

Like a Banker-Belt-n-Road plan, BlackRock give Australia batteries we don’t need with ESG strings attached

Jim.henderson

Some nice Banker people have turned up to give us the batteries we need to save the world. What could possibly go wrong?

The Leviathan BlackRock will soon spend a billion dollars on big batteries in Australia. It is the largest asset manager in the world — with some $10 Trillion in assets to direct. To put that kind of power in perspective, the entire GDP of Australia is about $1.4 Trillion, so if BlackRock chose to throw its weight around, to hypothetically, improve its chances of making a profit, it won’t need an army, it just needs to hint “nice business you have there”, and the path will presumably clear. There are only two countries on Earth with larger GDP’s — America and China.

If BlackRock was a country the Foreign Investment Review Board of Australia would need to pay attention to potential conflicts of interest. But as it is, BlackRock flies under that radar while it bullies other companies and governments to do things to “save the world” which also happen to make profits for BlackRock.

If say, the voters of Australia voted against Climate Action as electricity bills drew blood, it’s hard to imagine […]

Well that explains everything: Bankers bullied Australia into Net Zero

Hands Up: It’s Net Zero now or a 1.5% interest rate hike?

So Australia is adopting Net Zero because the Global Financiers, who only want to save the world, would have refused to lend us money without jacking up our interest rates by 1.5%. The banker punishment would have meant a “17% investor exodus”. Fancy a stock market collapse?

This remarkable admission comes in the modeling released today by the Morrison government. No one is even trying to hide it.

At least we can stop pretending this has anything to do with science or the voters. Just cut out the IPCC and go straight for the BlackRock Temperature Tax, eh?

Note the “penalties” are imposed by global financiers:

Modelling shows real cost of no net-zero carbon emissions

Greg Brown and Geoff Chambers, The Australian

Businesses and households would have faced interest rate hikes of up to 1.5 per cent under expected penalties imposed by global financiers if the government had failed to adopt net zero emissions by 2050, modelling for the Glasgow climate package shows.

The penalty regime would have sparked a 17 per cent investment collapse by the middle of the […]

Guiliani on Georgia: It’s a bank heist pulled off in the middle of the night…

Rudy Guiliani goes through the smoking gun evidence of crimes in Georgia. Bt the most important five minutes is the last where he serves up a scathing but inspiring message to the Republican state governors and representatives. Yesterday the Pennsylvania representatives caved in and indicated they would not overturn the crooked election results. Later, after being called “cowards and traitors” by Trump, 60 of them put together a plea to Congress to fix things. They know what they should have done.

““For these reasons,” they wrote to the state’s congressional delegation, “We the undersigned members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly urge you to object … to the Electoral College votes received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.””

It is the duty of the State legislators to get the election results right. They can do it at any time. So hopefully this is just part of the process in psyching themselves up to do the right thing. Trumps team have put in 700 Affidavits so far.

“They’ve debunked the theory…”

Rudy Guiliani names and explains the layout of the room. What seems most surprising to an Australian (me) is that the observers are supposed to stay at a table on […]

There is something remarkable going on in America

America choosing between Woke versus Traditional.

Polls are open, Queues are long, the National Guard has arrived, and random piles of bricks are already in place (ready for Civic celebrations by the Party of Tolerance?) Walmart has pulled guns and ammunition off its shelves (maybe they don’t want them stolen?) Shops are boarded up. It’s everything you need for an election.

Trump Trains are everywhere.

What a phenomenon. There’s even allegedly a 96 mile Trump Train in Arizona. Holy Smoke!

Whatever happens today, that passion, that fervour and dedication is not going to go away. This kind of energy just can’t be put back in a box. (And if the youtube should vanish, see it at this tweet).

Some members of the Party of Love are pretending the US Flags on these cars could be ISIS banners, calling the Trump Trains “Vanilla ISIS”. Yeah. Like, that’s not divisive.

But people who love America are having a lot of fun. Through their sheer exuberance, they must be pulling people in. Would you rather join the party of Optimism and Pizzazz or the Woke complainers?

Listen to the effect the sight of a Trump Train pursuing a Biden Bus has on […]

Worlds “Largest Shadow Bank” wants Australia to shut coal plants faster

Because Big Bankers really want to save the Earth, right?

BlackRock, the 10 trillion dollar “global investment fund” is urging the Australian company AGL to shut Bayswater and Loy B Yang Coal Plants much sooner than planned. BlackRock is a NY based and as wikipedia says “Due to its power, and the sheer size and scope of its financial assets and activities, BlackRock has been called the world’s largest shadow bank.”

The move only got 20% support from investors. Australian investors largely said “no thanks”. Where are The Greens in exposing multinational powers that want to influence Australia — they’re part of the Big Banker Promotion Team.

BlackRock turns up the heat on AGL’s coal exit plans

Nick Toscano, Sydney Morning Herald

AGL faced an investor revolt on Wednesday, as more than 20 per cent of the company’s shareholders backed a resolution for the board to align the retirement of the Loy Yang A power plant in Victoria and its Bayswater station in New South Wales with a strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

This would mean shutting Loy Yang A, the largest brown coal fired power plant in Victoria, […]

Goldman Sachs pledges $750 billion on climate change — bankers just want to save the world too

Just when you think banks are only in it for the money, along comes Goldman Sachs to advise us on the planetary atmosphere:

“Goldman Sachs released a 34-page analysis of the impact of climate change. And the results are terrifying.”

All these nice banks want to save Earth too.

Yusef Kahn, Business Insider, Sept 2019

For some reason (what could it be?) a few months ago the Goldman Sachs investment bank was gripped with a sudden urge to repackage the IPCC report. Perhaps they were afraid their clients didn’t watch CNN, the BBC, or, pick-any-channel, maybe they couldn’t afford a television?

A Goldman Sachs report on the impact of climate change on cities across the world makes for grim reading. The bank warned that “consequences of a warming world may well play out over several decades to come, even if efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions are successful today.” Rising temperatures would lead to changing disease patterns, more intense and longer-lasting heatwaves, more destructive weather events, and pressure on the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.

“Despite the uncertainty around the timing and scale of the impact, it may be prudent […]

Giant Spanish Bank spends €100 b on Earth’s weather, cos they are nice people

This absolutely definitely is not about profits or money.

Giant Spanish bank announces €100 billion plan to fight climate change

BBVA, the second largest bank in Spain, has launched a major new financing initiative to support sustainable development and combat climate change in the coming years.

Only gas and oil companies are “vested interests” seeking to profiteer from our demise. Banks are charities:

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said, “At BBVA, we want to play a key role in mobilizing resources to halt climate change and promote sustainable development. It is an ambitious, long-term goal in line with our purpose of ‘bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.’”

Apparently, the bank’s role is to change Earth’s climate, and “bring the age of opportunity to everyone”.

Do their shareholders know, I wonder?

Can anyone see an elephant?

Warning — Meaningless acronym coming — SBTI:

BBVA has also become the first Spanish bank to commit to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The campaign helps major corporates work out how they have to cut emissions to prevent the impacts of climate change.

The group’s new strategy is called Pledge 2025…

If you wanted […]

World Bank likes Australia’s Emissions Trading Scheme — the “secret” ETS

According to the World Bank, Australia has implemented an ETS

It’s charades all round. Carbon markets are so dismal that the World Bank marks up the Australian ETS (which most Australians have never heard of) as “implemented”. Which makes it so much better than Canada’s which is “under consideration”. In fact the World Bank says Australia’s ETS covers half our emissions and 381 Megatons of CO2 or equivalent. Sounds “impressive”.

Strangely the Australian government hasn’t run an advertising campaign to brag about our landmark ETS legislation. I can’t think why? Perhaps it’s because Australian’s gave the largest victory in 20 years to a man who swore a blood oath against a carbon tax? Or maybe it’s the polls that show Australian’s don’t want to pay for renewables, 80% don’t donate to environmental causes, and 60% don’t want or don’t care about the Paris deal if they could get cheaper electricity.

Let’s poll Australians and ask ‘Do we have an ETS?” — maybe 80% would say “No”. Maybe ninety. But we do have one, waiting like a paper troll, ready to spring to life. It’s largely secret hidden legislation, buried under a title called the ERF Safeguard Mechanism — (don’t mention […]

Trump closing the deal: “The only thing that can stop this corrupt force is you — the American people”

A brilliant, polished, excellent advert — cuts like a sabre to the only point that matters.

h/t to the great Scott Adams, who says:

1. Trump delivers his lines perfectly, like an experienced actor. We haven’t heard him like this before. You probably didn’t think he had this in him. He stays calm and assured, but not cocky. That is an effective counter-framing to Clinton’s framing of Trump as an unpredictable madman. Here Trump comes off as perfectly reasonable and deeply empathetic.

2. The timing is perfect. This race went so low that even the trolls were starting to gasp for oxygen. Trump made us wait for relief – Hollywood style. He made us crave civility and sanity. And just when we thought it was out of reach, he goes ultra-positive.

But here’s the best part. Clinton has no good options to counter this message.

Countering that, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says Trump won’t be allowed to win:

My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with […]

Bill Shorten wants a lot of new carbon taxes and to help international bankers

A gift for Turnbull, who doesn’t deserve it.

Welcome to Election-2016 in Australia.

We’ve done this before: Bill Shorten has promised there will be “no carbon tax under Labor”. This almost exactly mirrors the promise made by Julia Gillard on her way to the most pathetic parliamentary win ever recorded in Australian history. Gillard’s barely-there-with-the-help-of-two-turncoats-success was based on this infamous deceit, which Mr Bill Shorten approved of and voted in. Channelling Gillard-2010

At least he is kinda upfront about saying there will be no tax apart from a lot of new taxes he calls trading schemes. What kind of trade are you forced by law to make? A tax…

“There will be no carbon tax under Labor, there will be no fixed price under Labor, what we are doing instead is we are working with the market to create an Emissions Trading Scheme,” Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said.

He is offering a kind of “Cap N Trade”, which is bound to suit all the Aussies who’ve been lining up at protests saying “No Carbon Tax. We want Cap N Trade”. Have you met one ? Me neither.

Let’s not forget the advantages of trading versus taxes: Markets […]

Carbon capture, clean coal plant goes bankrupt, only $4.4b over budget

TonyfromOz explained how fatal the numbers on “carbon capture” are. (It’s like the GFC of engineering). The new coal plants cost 60% more to build and waste something like 40% of the entire energy they generate to “catch” a beneficial fertilizer and and stuff it in a small hot hole underground.

It’s hard being first, but hey, the plant is only 2 years behind and $4.4 billion over budget. Part of the costs are due to delays because of wet weather. (Apparently the climate models did not see that coming…)

Obama has set aside $6 billion since 2009 for lab research and “commercial deployment” of clean coal. In response to the abject failure he’s doing what most people do when spending other people’s money — “Despite these troubles, the White House says it will continue to support clean coal.”

News last week:

America’s First Clean Coal Plant Put Mississippi Power ‘on the Brink of Bankruptcy’

[Link may not work, try “cached copy“.]

Stephen Lacey

Last week, state regulators approved an emergency rate increase for Mississippi Power in order to keep the company afloat as it completes the increasingly-expensive Kemper plant. Mississippi Power customers will […]

Carbon ship sinking: Barclays bank closes its carbon desk

Gillard once lauded the genius of the carbon market. That part of the “free” market which is free to move, is moving — and right out. The smart money is saying that carbon trading is a dead dog. It’s a has-been-tulip, a sick puppy, a sinking ship.

The future of global carbon trading is so “certain” that Barclays Bank is not even bothering to leave one part time guy in the US office with a post box, so they can pretend they still have an interest in it. The mood has so changed, they see an advantage in letting the world know they’re not wasting a single cent more on carbon trading in the United States of America. Well that made my day. :-).

“That is not good news for carbon-dioxide trading, especially not in the US,”

Barclays was the first UK bank to set up a carbon trading desk, and fast to move into carbon trading: “Barclays Capital is the most active player in the emissions trading market, having traded some 300 million tonnes as at February 2007″.

Barclays Closes US Carbon Desk In Latest Cap And Trade Setback

8.9 out of 10 based on 94 […]

Donna Faragher: armed with unpublished complaint-mail and an unbankable license — destroys livelihoods

Donna Faragher, Minister for Environment and other stuff.

Some people have recently received replies from the Minister of the Department of Environment in Western Australia.

The ten second answer to the latest DEC excuses: The Thompsons License is unbankable; the Thompsons have already met the conditions; the complaints are unverified and often solicited, or relate to some other business, and Donna Faragher can teach you how to spell “business certainty” but she hasn’t got a clue what it is.

I’ve added my thoughts below, in between the full grey-box-quotes of the letter.

____________________________________

Minister For Environment; Youth

Thank you for your email to the Western Australian Government dated 22 September 2010 regarding the Narrogin Beef Producers cattle feedlot in Narrogin.

Good to see that through the magic of electronic communications it only took one month and four days to reply.

By way of background to your letter, Narrogin Beef is one of 44 licensed or registered cattle feedlots in Western Australia. The Narrogin Beef feedlot is the only feedlot in Western Australia which has been the subject of significant and ongoing community complaints about unreasonable odour. […]

ESG comes undone — BlackRock, JP Morgan abandon “Climate Action 100+”

Naturally the Big Bankers dress up in trees and rivers… they wouldn’t wear the Dracula Cape when people are looking, would they?

By Jo Nova

The biggest climate bullies on the planet just got a bit smaller. There are two monster climate banker clubs in the world, and yesterday, one of them, the “Climate Action 100+” lost three of the six largest asset management funds in the world, namely JP Morgan Chase, State Street and BlackRock.

State Street manages about $3.6 trillion in funds, JP Morgan Chase about $3 or $4 trillion, and BlackRock $10 trillion, so that’s something like $17,000 billion dollars that just left the ranch. The fact that this kind of money was all grouped together in a cabal of any sort is bad enough, but ponder that now, after the biggest fish have left the tank, there’s still $50 trillion left in assets on the inside.

It appears the Climate Action 100+ group had grown too big for its boots — the new Climate Action 100+ “phase 2” strategy expected asset managers to actively hound companies to cut their emissions.

An ESG Asset Manager Exodus

The Wall Street Journal

February 17th, 2024 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

“Verge of complete failure” but otherwise a bonanza Olympic fashion parade for billionaires

By Jo Nova

Scientifically the UN Conference of Parties (COP) has abjectly failed 27 times at the one thing it was supposedly set up to do, which was reduce carbon emissions and save the weather, but it’s been a wild success on the Global-Trade-Party-and-Schmooze calendar.

Tonight the UN COP28 “climate” conference is on the ‘Verge of complete failure’ says CNN — because they’ve given up talking about “phasing out fossil fuels” and they’re only trying to reduce fossil fuels now (exactly the same as the last 27 meetings). No doubt tomorrow, headlines will tell us a historic deal, which is barely enough, was somehow clawed from the brink after an all-nighter.

The historic deal will amount to ambiguous subclauses that enable carbon grift and graft wherever carbon grafting and grifting were likely to happen anyway.

28 conferences and nothing to show for it:

It was never about CO2 anyway, was it?

Whatever happens, the conference is a big success as the Planetary Fashion Parade where the virtue-signalers of the world unite to show off their cloaks of carbon-purity. In the background it’s the place where billionaires and bankers bring their yachts and personal planes to meet Presidents […]

The Climate Money Monster Cabal may be starting to unravel… Vanguard flees GFANZ

By Jo Nova Vanguard abandons the UN led Net-Zero Climate Finance monster group

Only a week after Ron de Santis pulled $2 billion in Florida funds from BlackRock, Vanguard, the second biggest asset manager in the world, has abruptly pulled out of GFANZ.

Vanguard has $7 trillion in assets under management, and GFANZ is a conglomerate cabal of bankers insurers and asset managers that has snowballed into a 550 member cabal with a jawdropping, obscene, 150 trillion in assets. Together, for a moment, they almost created the illusion of a One World Government by Bankers. After all, the GDP of the United States of America is only $23 trillion. So when an organization with six times the pulling power tells the world to go Net Zero, which company, which government would say “No”? Well, Ron de Santis did — and 18 other US states are working on it too.

The key weakness to the $150,000 billion dollar GFANZ monster is — as I said last week — that it’s an illusion. They are wielding other people’s money — using their clients own pension funds to indirectly punish their own clients, and the good guys […]