Free Republic

In contemporary lexicon, few terms have been reduced to shopworn tatters more than “fascist,” typically through mindless overuse against the current democratically elected occupant of the White House. To the degree that fascism references an economy corrupted by government collusion with private industry to enforce ideological conformity, however, efforts like “Operation Choke Point” targeting politically disfavored businesses actually merit that descriptor. In welcome news, however, Citigroup announced this month that it would no longer deny financial services to firearms retailers, moving the nation one step closer to an end of that execrable campaign. Americans expect government officials to protect our...

WHAT HAPPENED: Mexico’s government is defending three financial institutions accused by the U.S. Treasury Department of laundering cartel money and facilitating payments for fentanyl precursors to China. 👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Mexico’s Secretariat of Treasury and Public Credit (SHCP), the U.S. Department of the Treasury, CIBanco SA, Intercam SA, and Vector Casa De Bolsa. 📍WHEN & WHERE: Mexico’s SHCP issued a statement this week. 💬KEY QUOTE: “Financial facilitators like CIBanco, Intercam, and Vector are enabling the poisoning of countless Americans by moving money on behalf of cartels, making them vital cogs in the fentanyl supply chain.” — Secretary of the Treasury...

Indiana’s state treasurer repeatedly stood against big banks canceling accounts and releasing customer data of Christians and conservatives for viewpoint discrimination. A pending must-pass bill in Indiana’s Republican-run legislature would strip some of Treasurer Daniel Elliott’s powers and could give them to those same banks.... Elliott has been a key partner of a nationwide coalition of conservative financial elected officials, the State Financial Officers Foundation. As part of that coalition, he and some 25 other Republican state financial officers have fought financial discrimination against Christians and conservatives, ESG, and DEI.... In a 2024 Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) press conference, Elliott...

YouTube video showing very bad news from Chinese banks. Here's a list of highlights.@1:41 is footage of a woman who recorded herself trying to get her own money out of the bank. She told them she wanted it to buy a safe to keep her money in. She was denied. @5:60 is a graph showing the number of banking institutions that have closed: 307 banks closed in 2 years. More mergers and closings on the way.@9:15 China's largest bank, PINGAN, is not doing well. Annual report shows profit down 4%, operating revenue down 11%. Their retail division is down 20%...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose. The continued use of paper-based payments by the Federal Government, including checks and money orders, flowing into and out of the United States General Fund, which might be thought of as America’s bank account, imposes unnecessary costs; delays; and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies. Mail theft complaints have increased substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, Department of the Treasury checks are 16 times more likely to be reported lost or...

Why is Elon Musk supporting Ron Paul leading an audit of The Federal Reserve such a big deal? Because The Fed has NEVER had a full audit, or full disclosure of monetary policy decisions Example: The Fed got caught doing HALF A TRILLION in swaps overseas with no oversight Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was even questioned about giving this half a trillion in swaps to the central banks overseas: No one gave the approval and he says he doesn’t need approval, “We have a longstanding legal authority to do swaps with other central banks — It's not an emergency...

By debanking conservatives, JPMorgan and Bank of America may be “debanking” themselves, On The Money has learned. It all stems from a raft of bad publicity that began with President Trump’s statements in Davos a couple of weeks ago, accusing the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 banks of canceling accounts of conservatives. It continued with Wednesday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing on the matter. The result: Some customers began to flee the big guys, and at least one beneficiary has been to a small online bank that is beginning to make a name for itself in conservative circles by claiming...

March 21, 2024 Press Release WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland opening an inquiry into the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) use of artificial intelligence (AI) to surveil Americans' financial information. The Committee and its Select Subcommittee have reason to believe that the IRS and Department of Justice (DOJ) are actively monitoring millions of Americans' private transactions, bank accounts, and related financial information—without any legal process—using an AI-powered system. This AI-powered warrantless financial surveillance is highly concerning and raises serious doubts...

Government consumer watchdog claims Capital One misled consumers.. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing Capital One, alleging the bank illegally misled customers by not notifying them of account options that paid higher interest rates. The federal government's consumer watchdog claims Capital One's practices meant millions of customers missed out on a collective $2 billion they could have made in interest payments. ... CFPB accused Capital One of promising depositors that their 360 Savings account provided one of the nation's "top," "best" and "highest" interest rates but froze their rate at just 0.30% even as deposit rates rose nationwide....

Less than three weeks ago, on December 23, in a post on optimism about the potential demise of the green energy fantasy, I took note that two of the largest U.S. banks had just quit something called the “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the biggest ones, had joined the NZBA as it was getting organized under auspices of the UN back in 2021. NZBA, together with other related groups organized around the same time, aspired to be cartels of financial institutions that would...

The lame duck Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a rule in December to curb overdraft penalties in what experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation is an example of government overreach that will ravage low-income Americans. The CFPB — an agency that is considered the brainchild of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — finalized the rule just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, with the aim of forcing banks to either cap overdraft fees at $5, far less than the $35 average, or to provide the overdraft as a form of credit rather than a penalty....

Another ESG rat jumps ship: @MorganStanley leaves the illegal Net Zero Banking Alliance . .. @Citi and @BankofAmerica abandoned ship earlier this week. .... What's melting: The illegal ESG cartel. Citigroup and Bank of America drop out of the Net Zero Banking Alliance. ... After ESG and DEI are abandoned, what will be the next grift? ... Music to my ears! Climate change isn't something that can be controlled by human hands, and Net Zero is just a money-making scam. It's that blazing ball of exploding gas in the sky causing it dum dums, and there's nothing we can do...

Not soon after the general election, and within two weeks of each other, two major financial institutions have left a United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). This is after they joined three years ago, pledging to require environmental social governance standards (ESG) across their platforms, products and systems. According to the "bank-led and UN-convened" NZBA, global banks joined the alliance, pledging to align their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, NZBA explains. Since April 2021, 145 banks in 44 countries with more than $73 trillion in assets have joined NZBA, tripling...

HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WEAPONIZED THE BANK SECRECY ACT TO SPY ON AMERICANS Posted Dec 13, 2024 By Martin Armstrong | SPREAD THE LOVE https://twitter.com/i/status/1865108551611396247 A Congressional investigation committee released an extremely concerning report this week entitled: “FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE IN THE UNITED STATES: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WEAPONIZED THE BANK SECRECY ACT TO SPY ON AMERICANS” that details how the US government has been monitoring American citizens through bank transactions, with an emphasis on citizens who have expressed conservative viewpoints. “Financial data can tell a person’s story, including one’s “religion, ideology, opinions, and interests” as well as one’s “political leanings,...

In a government full of nasty, obnoxious and extra-legal regulatory initiatives to harass the people, the effort to regulate “money laundering” out of existence has to rank at the top. The basic idea is for the government to require all banks to become involuntary deputies of law enforcement to spy on their customers behind their backs, so that the bureaucrats can gain access to detailed information on what every single person is doing all the time. And thus will all criminality be stomped out! In the real world, what anti-money laundering (AML) regulation means is that the government gains vast...

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that the federal government has been weaponized to spy on Americans' bank accounts and financial transactions. "We know in 2023 [that] 14,000 different individuals in the government [about] three million times in one year......14,000 individuals did over three million searches of this database of information on Americans banking habits," Jordan said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. Last week the House Judiciary Committee issued a report that detailed how the federal government had unchecked access to private financial data of everyday Americans. "The FBI has manipulated the Suspicious Activity...

In a move that’s left self-employed workers scratching their heads, the Spanish tax office, Hacienda, has dropped a bombshell: banks will have to report every single payment made to self-employed clients, even those under the previous €3,000 threshold. The unexpected measure slipped quietly into a royal decree that also tweaks corporate tax rates for multinationals, which means the taxman will have eyes on transactions of any amount, whether through traditional methods or modern mobile systems like the popular Bizum. The €3,000 rule is no more For years, banks only raised the alarm for transactions over €3,000. As José María Peláez,...

According to a congressional report made public on Friday, President Joe Biden’s administration has gotten banks to surveil the economic habits of of their customers, especially the ones suspected of supporting President-elect Donald Trump. Under the guise of identifying potential terrorists and money launderers, the FBI and Treasury Department sought help from 16,000 financial institutions without subpoenas looking for tickets purchased to conservative gatherings, the purchase of Bibles or anything with keywords like “Trump” or “MAGA.” The official X account for the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released its report on X along with the text:...

In 2023, the federal government spent $658 billion on net interest costs on the national debt. That total, which grew by 38 percent from $476 billion in 2022, was the largest amount ever spent on interest in the budget and totaled 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Interest costs are on track to become the largest category of spending in the federal budget... In the late 1970s, the increasing national debt and higher interest rates led to a boost in interest costs, which reached a historic high of 3.2 percent of GDP in 1991 (looking at interest costs as...

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, there has been an unconstitutional and relentless attack on the Second Amendment rights and privacies of American citizens. In September 2023, gun-grabbing organizations and far Left politicians including New York Attorney General Letitia James cheered on the creation of a new Merchant Category Code (MCC) for firearms retailers within the payment processing system.... The creation of MCCs specifically for firearms retailers is weaponizing the financial system against lawful gun owners by seeking to label and track transactions on firearms and ammunition. To counteract this infringement on our rights, we introduced the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act.......