Posted on 02/23/2024 7:31:52 AM PST by MtnClimber
AMAC members are engaged in the effort to hold big banks accountable for cancelling services to consumers and organizations who hold worldviews that the leadership of these financial institutions find objectionable. Last year, they sent JP Morgan Chase executives over 91,000 messages to help hold the bank accountable for the decision to assault the free speech rights of fossil fuel companies, arms manufacturers, and religious organizations. This assault included denying services to former Ambassador Sam Brownback’s non-profit, the National Committee for Religious Freedom.
The strategy these financial institutions use to close accounts, or de-bank, individuals and organizations who dare subscribe to a contrary, unapproved worldview includes employing vague reputational risk policies. Back in 2014, Deloitte defined reputational risk as being “risks related to ethics and integrity, such as fraud, bribery, and corruption. Next come security risks, including both physical and cyber breaches – followed closely by product and service risks…” A recent glaring example of an organization that completely mishandled its management of reputational risk and allowed it to spiral into a full-blown marketing disaster is Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light fiasco of last year.
Today, some financial institutions have stretched the definition of reputational risk to include damage the bank perceives customers with a conservative mindset can do to the institution’s reputation, real or imagined. Unfortunately, these policies provide some cover for banks to persecute consumers on the basis of political ideology.
Pushback against these reputational risk strategies is beginning to emerge. The state of Mississippi is currently considering SB 2118, the Equality in Financial Services Act, which is legislation that according to the bill’s text, would prohibit financial institutions from “…denying financial services based on a person’s religious exercise, association, speech, social views or participation in a particular industry…”.
AMAC Action, on behalf of the over 19,000 AMAC members in Mississippi, went on the record recently to support SB 2118. We’re also working with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a leading Christian law firm dedicated to protecting religious freedom and free speech among other civil rights, to ascertain other egregious acts of persecution of conservatives by financial institutions as well as identifying bills that are similar to SB 2118 in other states.
Matt Sharp, Senior Counsel, Director of the Center for Public Policy at Alliance Defending Freedom, said this about Mississippi’s Equality in Financial Services Act, “Everyone needs access to basic financial services no matter their political or religious beliefs. Banks that are too big to fail are too big for bias. Banks should not discriminate against people because of their religious or political views. Like the racial redlining of the past, this form of discrimination creates a two-tiered society. That’s wrong, and that’s what this bill seeks to stop in its tracks.”
The problem is not just de-banking. It is also a problem that banks are reporting on customers who purchase legal, but un-PC items like guns, ammunition, bibles or MAGA products. It is the merger of leftist state and leftist corporate power.
This is more UNCONSTITUTIONAL federal government interference and activity. The problem is NOT “corporate power”, the problem is unconstitutional and totalitarian GOVERNMENT power.
Imagine banks being biased toward liberals and doing to them what banks have done to conservatives. The media would be howling mad, demanding investigations and punishment.
Conservative banks could really make a huge go of it if they advertised and said something akin to “and we promise we will not divulge your info, or report on you for buying items that liberals find offensive”. L8beral banks would lose a lot of,business then as independent minded folks leave en mass for greener pastures where their bank doesn’t spy on them and rat them out
Despite their past history and military affiliation, and I’ve been banking with them since the 80s, even USAA has gone woke.
I think maybe some of the credit unions are still ok, but I don’t know of any banks that haven’t been caught up in this BS as of now.
Very misleading headline. It looks like Mississippi is fighting against banks who are biased in favor of conservatives. Maybe say “Anti-Conservative Bias”
That being said, I agree that this is mainly an issue of corporatist power, enabled by government regulation. State and Federal banking regulation has created so many barriers to entry into the banking business that it is virtually impossible to create any competition for these institutions.
The government bias in favor of consolidating all nature of business into larger and larger institutions (think big pharma, big tech, big finance, big healthcare, etc.) effectively prevents anyone from breaking the institutionalized bias of these organizations, which is uniformly left-leaning. Sadly, the repubs, with their blind faith in “pro-business” policies have paved the way for all of this.
We need to vote for candidates who are pro-economic freedom; but when they get elected, the institutions just buy them off with campaign contributions and fancy dinners and excursions. It is going to be a difficult cycle to break.
Yeah that is the problem- more and more graduates coming out of liberal colleges are infesting the banking system now- turning conservative banks liberal by overwhelming them with numbers.
Would like to see conservative banks arise, and stand their ground, and not cave. Just a shame that so many have caved. U fortu ately this world is Satan’s domain for now, and he runs the show within limits of course- as a result, woke is infesting everything, and ruining it.
Just like China 🇨🇳.
All it would take is for the large conservative states like FLorida and Texas to tell these banks that you cannot be chartered in our state (state-level) or simply revoke their FDIC insurance (federal level).
More states need to do this. Texas has already started but if the Wokesters at the major banks found themselves shut out of the market in 25-30 states for discriminatory provision of service, it would stop REAL fast.
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