Wells Fargo is the latest of the big banks to find itself in Republican crosshairs for its discriminatory debanking and lending policies. According to Fox Business:
More than a dozen Republican attorneys general are demanding Wells Fargo answer for the closure of a gun dealer’s account and woke environmental policies they feel could negatively impact its clients, according to a letter provided to Fox News Digital.
The coalition of top state legal officers is eyeing Wells Fargo’s practices regarding debanking, or the closure of individual or organization accounts the bank views as a risk. The group believes the financial institution uses the practice as “a political tool to extend the policies of the Biden Administration throughout the economy.”
“Wells Fargo is pushing the Biden administration’s anti-gun and anti-traditional energy policies and discriminating against customers who don’t fall in line with their political beliefs,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News Digital.
The Republican attorneys general are also concerned with Wells Fargo’s environmental policies. These include aligning its activities “to support the goals of the Paris Agreement and to helping transition to a net zero carbon economy.”
In their letter, the AGs fire back at that statement, noting that the “Paris Agreement is not law in the United States” and saying that the commitment “is transparently political” as Wells Fargo “continues to take more and more debanking actions to accomplish its political goals.”
“When you made this statement, Wells Fargo publicly committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including emissions from clients in its financing portfolios,” the AGs wrote. “A few months later, Wells Fargo pushed its commitment even further by joining the UN-convened Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), along with the five other largest banks in the country. Together, these banks are acting as economywide economic regulators, carrying out mandates that the Biden Administration has been unable to pass through our country’s democratic processes.”
Climate emissions reduction targets can have unintended consequences. For example, developing countries rely on readily available hydrocarbon energy to power their economies.
NLPC sponsored a proposal at Wells Fargo asking the company to examine how their climate change policies may impact the humanitarian and economic development of emerging nations. The company’s annual meeting is expected to be scheduled for the end of April, where we will present the proposal.
