Commentary: The Financialization of Nature

Power Plant Money

Financialization: “A pattern of accumulation in which profit making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production.”
– Greta Krippner, Economic Sociologist, University of Michigan

There are plenty of examples of how America’s economy shifted from a production-based economy to a financially-based economy over the past forty years. Starting around 1980, with the economies of post-World War II Europe and Japan fully rebuilt and roaring, and emerging Asian economies turning into powerhouses of manufacturing as well, America chose financialization as an alternative to rising up to meet the competition.

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As Inflation Worries Investors, Wall Street Is Buying Up American Soil

Wall Street is moving to buy up U.S. farmland in hopes that it will be a safe bet to hedge against inflation and concerning economic conditions, according to Reuters.

Investment funds have accumulated over a million acres of farmland in the U.S., a small part of the 900 million acres in the U.S. but significant for the market when looking at the pace of acquisitions, according to Reuters. The move from investors is drawing the concern of some, including lawmakers, who see the quick constraint on supply as a barrier for the next generation of farmers who can’t buy at the elevated price.

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Nikki Haley Meets with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Other Wall Street Elites

Nikki Haley

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley met with several Wall Street executives in a series of events Tuesday in her bid to be the Republican nominee for president, according to the Financial Times.

Haley attended a small meet-and-greet breakfast in New York where CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink was in attendance, followed by a fundraiser later in the day co-hosted by Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs, according to the FT. BlackRock has been criticized by conservatives in recent years for its adoption and promotion of Environment, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) policies, which aim to invest in companies based on their commitment to social and environmental causes.

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Biden Admin in Talks to Potentially Bail Out a Third Bank: Report

The U.S. government is considering backing a potential deal to rescue the struggling First Republic Bank, in a bid by U.S. officials and Wall Street executives to head off the chance of a third major bank failure, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the discussions.

Wall Street investors have expressed an interest in helping stabilize the struggling San Francisco-based bank, which has been selling assets — which lost value amid the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes designed to combat inflation — to pay out a surge in customers pulling their funds from the bank, according to Bloomberg. While the extent of government aid has not yet been decided, the government could cover the cost of First Republic’s losses or offer liability protection to companies involved in a deal.

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Commentary: The Left’s Little Financial Engine That Could Change the World Radically

Amalgamated Bank, with just five branches across three cities, and a market value lower than the net worth of many an individual hedge fund honcho, would seem an unlikely mover and shaker in the world of Wall Street, let alone Washington, D.C. 

Yet last fall, it successfully pressured colossal credit card companies Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to use the financial system to track and report gun purchases. Amalgamated is “more than a bank,” says Michael Watson of the Capital Research Center. “It’s a bank for an ideological movement.” 

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Commentary: FTX and the Root of Our Financial Crisis

Both liberal and conservative commentators, whether talking about the Great Recession, the financial collapse and bailouts of recent vintage, or now the FTX cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, have neglected the cultural and moral reasons for these repeated episodes of economic mess and criminality. Unless those causes are addressed, all the finger pointing and proposed “solutions” will be about as helpful as putting a bandage on a tumor. 

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Connecticut Gets Boost from Credit Rating Agency

A Wall Street credit rating firm has bumped up Connecticut’s score for its general obligation bonds, citing the state’s ever improving financial outlook. 

Standard & Poor’s announced Monday, it is upgrading Connecticut’s general obligation bond credit rating from A+ (positive) to AA- (stable), as the state prepares to issue more than $900 million in bonds next week for school construction and other public projects. 

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Wall Street Is Freaking Out About One Major Recession Indicator

Wall Street investors and economists are sounding the alarm over a yield curve inversion, one of the most reliable indicators that a recession is coming, according to The New York Times.

The yield curve inversion, or when two-year bonds have a higher return than ten-year bonds, hit its largest spread yet on Wednesday, sending investors into a panic, according to the NYT. Economists and investors see this kind of inversion as a negative omen for the economy, and every recession in the U.S. in the last 50 years has been preceded by a yield curve inversion.

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GOP Calls Out Biden’s Attempt to Impose a ‘Green New Deal’ Through Wall Street Regulation

A group of 40 House Republicans sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday, urging the agency to rescind a regulatory proposal forcing companies to disclose “climate-related risks.”

The Republicans, led by House Oversight Subcommittee on Environment Ranking Member Ralph Norman, slammed the financial regulator, saying it exceeded its congressionally-mandated authority in issuing the climate rule, in the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The lawmakers added that the rule was especially inappropriate given the ongoing energy crisis.

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Schweizer: The Titans of Wall Street Are Among China’s Closest American Allies

TRANSCRIPT: McCabe: One of the great ironies in investigative journalist Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed is the degree to which the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated the very heart of American capitalism on Wall Street. Schweizer told The Star News Network that the titans of Wall Street are among China’s closest allies. Schweizer: What China wants from Wall Street is access to Western capital with no questions asked. And unfortunately, the biggest firms on Wall Street are prepared to give it to them. So when the Trump administration pushed for tariffs and restrictions on Chinese economic activity in the United States, one of the first institutions to stand up and protest in the White House were the big firms on Wall Street. McCabe: Schweizer said one of the Chinese Communist Party’s biggest supporters on Wall Street is BlackRock and its CEO and co-founder Larry Fink. Schweizer: He basically runs a fund that that manages money that’s equivalent to half of the entire United States economy. So he has an enormous pull. McCabe: The investigative reporter said Fink is not shy about his support for the Chinese government. Schweizer: He has also praised the regime. He said that yes, you know,…

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Schweizer: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Other Wall Street Leaders Partner with Chinese Coal, Military Enterprises

The investigative journalist and author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win told The Star News Network the titans of capitalism on Wall Street are now the partners of the Chinese Communist Party.

“What China wants from Wall Street is access to Western capital with no questions asked, and unfortunately the biggest fans on Wall Street are prepared to give it to them,” said Peter Schweizer, who is the president and founder of the Government Accountability Institute and the host of The Drill Down podcast.

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Marco Rubio Proposing GOP Divorce from Big Business

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is calling for Republicans to break from big business in policy and polities when he spoke at the National Conservatism Conference yesterday. He also penned an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel saying America’s largest companies have peddled “anti-American ideologies” and “wokeness” which has contributed to America’s growing partisan divide.

Rubio comments from the conference were pared down into another op-ed posted in The American Conservative where he said if conservatives do not fight back using “corporate patriotism,” Rubio said “we would lose America.”

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U.S. Consumer Spending Grew Slowly in September amid High COVID-19 Cases, Supply Chain Problems and Rising Inflation

U.S. consumer spending growth slowed in September, and income dropped due to high COVID-19 cases, supply shortages, rising inflation, and ending unemployment benefits.

Consumer spending increased 0.6% in September, down from a 1% jump in August, the Commerce Department announced Friday. Personal income fell 1% in September, driven by a 72% drop in unemployment insurance benefits that offset a 0.7% spike in wages and benefits, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Economists polled by Reuters projected a 0.5% in consumer spending. Delta variant cases peaked in the middle of September, and the continued supply chain backups have caused shortages and rising prices, making it harder for consumers to purchase their desired goods, the WSJ reported.

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Commentary: Biden’s Desperate Race to the Lying Bottom

On Monday, Joe Biden uncorked the largest lie of a 50-year political career overstuffed with them.

“My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” he tweeted. “Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America. And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.”

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Commentary: ESG Investing Is Politics by Other Means

Before Joe Biden’s election, environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing was sweeping all before it. Wall Street was coming to the planet’s rescue and saving capitalism at the same time. It was a self-serving myth. As I show in my new report Capitalism, Socialism and ESG published today, doing well by doing good is no more than Wall Street sales patter. But since the election, financial regulators have been falling over themselves playing catchup.

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DOJ Investigating Traders Who Triggered GameStop Frenzy: Report

The Department of Justice has opened a probe into the stock market frenzy that led to the meteoric rise of “meme stocks” such as GameStop, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Federal investigators are reportedly looking into whether market manipulation played a role in the increased volatility and meme stock surge, The Wall Street Journal reported. As part of the investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoenaed information from stock market brokers including Robinhood, the popular investment platform that many investors used to buy GameStop, AMC Entertainment and others.

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Commentary: Pitchfork Populists v. Wall Street?

As a long-time financial services executive, every so often I am called upon by friends and family from other walks of life to comment on a story related to the stock market. Such is the case with the GameStop saga.

Given that few of them are well-versed in the ways of Wall Street, that I hail from an investment banking pedigree and not a securities trading — particularly stock trading — background seems to them a distinction without a difference, and I offer my insights as best as I am able. As such, I’ve given more thought to GameStop than I may have otherwise.

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New York Young Republicans Plan ‘Re-Occupy Wall Street’ Event over Claims of Corruption

The New York Young Republicans are planning a “Re-Occupy Wall Street” event in New York City after allegations that popular investment platforms are throttling trading of certain stocks to protect big hedge funds.

“We do not want this massive story to get brushed under the rug. We want to keep the spotlight and attention on what Wall Street is doing and what the Biden administration is allowing. This is corrupt and illegal, plain and simple. We need to keep up the pressure,” New York Young Republicans President Gavin Mario Wax told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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CCP Insider: China Couldn’t Use Wall Street to Fix Trump, But It Can with Biden

The Chinese government will rely on a “core circle” of “old friends” on Wall Street and in Washington to influence the Biden administration, according to a Chinese academic with ties to the communist regime.

Di Dongsheng, the associate dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University, offered his predictions about China-U.S. relations in the upcoming administration during a speech in Shanghai on Nov. 28.

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Commentary: Will the Future of the GOP Be Corporatism or America First?

Regardless of how this election finally turns out—and we’re still weeks away from knowing the answer with certainty—it should be noted what President Trump was able to do in the last four years regarding the conservative narrative of the past several decades.

From what really was nothing more than an appendage of corporatism and vulture capitalists, Trump took the Republican Party and helped shape it into a broad coalition of workers and patriots that really does transcend race and ethnicities; call it America First Republican Populism.

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Commentary: Why Are Wall Street Banks Funneling $40 Billion into the Chinese Communist Party via the Ant Group IPO?

Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are underwriting part of what could be a $40 billion initial public offering (IPO) for Ant Group Co. in Hong Kong and Shanghai, which China-controlled megacorporation Alibaba owns a 33 percent share of, raising concerns that the money will be ultimately funneled to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and military.

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Wall Street Rises Again, Joins Worldwide Upswell for Markets

New York Stock Exchange

Wall Street joined a worldwide upswell by markets on Monday, as stocks push higher on hopes that the economy can continue its dramatic turnaround despite all the challenges ahead.

The S&P 500 was 1.59% higher in afternoon trading, following up on similar gains in Europe and Asia. The headliner was China’s market, which leaped 5.7% for its biggest gain since 2015, when it was in the midst of a bubble bursting. Treasury yields also climbed in a signal of rising optimism after reports detailed improvements in the U.S. and European economies.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 459 points, or 1.78%, at 26,287. The biggest companies once again led the way, and strength for Apple, Amazon and other tech-oriented titans helped push the Nasdaq composite up 2.21% toward another record.

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Stocks Rise on Jobs Data, S&P 500 Ends Week with Solid Gain

Stocks are closing higher Thursday after a report showed the U.S. job market continues to climb out of the crater created by the coronavirus pandemic in the spring. The S&P 500 rose 0.45% and finished the holiday-shortened week with a gain of 4%. Stocks also rose across Europe and Asia, while oil prices strengthened on hopes that a recovering economy will mean more demand. Worries about the virus are still weighing on investors, however. Florida reported another sharp increase in confirmed cases, helping to cut the S&P 500′s earlier gains by more than half. The bond market was also showing continued caution.

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Dow Jones and NASDAQ Close Higher with Boeing and Apple Leading the Way

Stocks climbed broadly higher on Wall Street Monday, as the market clawed back more than a third of its losses from last week.

The S&P 500 was up 1% in afternoon trading after a much healthier-than-expected report on the housing market shook the market from its wobbly start. European stocks had similar fluctuations before pushing higher. Treasury yields were mixed. Oil prices rose.

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Wall Street Veers Higher on Fed Plan to Buy Corporate Bonds

Stocks swung solidly higher on Wall Street in afternoon trading Monday after the Federal Reserve said it would begin buying individual corporate bonds, the central bank’s latest move to prop up volatile financial markets through the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The S&P 500 was up 1% after being down as much as 2.5% shortly after trading began in New York. The gains followed sharp losses in Asia and more moderate ones in Europe. Worries were on the rise that new waves of coronavirus infections around the world could derail the swift economic recovery that Wall Street had seemed sure just a week ago was on the way.

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Stocks Bounce Higher on Wall Street a Day After Big Rout

New York Stock Exchange

Stocks moved higher on Wall Street in afternoon trading Friday, recouping some of their losses a day after the market had its biggest rout since mid-March.

The S&P 500 was up 0.7% a day after dropping 5.9%. The benchmark index is still headed for a weekly loss following three weeks of solid gains. Small-company stocks and bond yields moved broadly higher, signs that pessimism about the economy was easing.

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Commentary: Globalization Helped Export China’s Coronavirus

In the current environment, something not seen in America in living memory, the fear and panic of the Chinese coronavirus make it near impossible to look ahead. But while everyone who can is working on the “here and now,” it is vital that we think about how this situation came to be, what we can learn from it, and how the crisis we are now experiencing can be prevented in the future.

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Commentary: The Arrest of Huawei Executive Meng Wanzhou Helps Negotiations with China

by Steven W. Mosher   Wall Street is worried that the arrest of Huawei Vice Chairman Meng Wanzhou will put President Trump’s ongoing trade negotiations with China on ice. They fear that China may retreat from its G-20 promises, or perhaps even call off the negotiations altogether. Some have suggested that U.S. tech executives avoid traveling to China, fearing revenge arrests. As someone who has followed elite politics in Communist China for 40 years, I disagree. In fact, I think that Meng’s arrest may actually help move the negotiations along. China’s leaders see her arrest as a deliberate provocation, intended to provoke them into the kinds of overreactions that would blow up the trade negotiations. They view it, in other words, as a strategic deception. Anyone who has read their Sun-Tzu knows that deception is the primary category—the default position, if you will—of Chinese strategic thought. And the ancient strategist’s famous dictum, “All warfare is deception,” obviously applies to trade wars as well. China knows that the president’s advisors are divided between the globalists, who hope for a win-win agreement on trade, and the nationalists, who want to disengage America’s economy from China’s. They fear that the nationalists have arranged…

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Wall Street Bankers Following Pence’s Lead in #MeToo Era

by John Elliott   If a young, female executive wants to find an experienced male colleague on Wall Street to mentor her, she can stop looking now. In the wake of #Metoo and the Brett Kavanaugh affair, male bankers and lawyers are quite literally fleeing to their man caves. Bloomberg reporters Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski have discovered that the ripple effects of the #Metoo campaign have hit Wall Street like a tsunami: For obvious reasons, few will talk openly about the issue. Privately, though, many of the men interviewed acknowledged they’re channeling Pence, saying how uneasy they are about being alone with female colleagues, particularly youthful or attractive ones, fearful of the rumor mill or of, as one put it, the potential liability. A manager in infrastructure investing said he won’t meet with female employees in rooms without windows anymore; he also keeps his distance in elevators. A late-40-something in private equity said he has a new rule, established on the advice of his wife, an attorney: no business dinner with a woman 35 or younger. The changes can be subtle but insidious, with a woman, say, excluded from casual after-work drinks, leaving male colleagues to bond, or having what should be a private meeting with a boss…

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Relocation of AllianceBernstein to Nashville is ‘Rebuke’ of Wall Street

AllianceBernstein Holding LP is moving its corporate headquarters and about 1,050 jobs to Nashville, in a move MSN/Bloomberg calls a “rebuke” of Wall Street. Some of AllianceBernstein’s functions like portfolio management will stay in New York, workers from legal, sales and marketing, and finance will begin moving to Music City this year. Chief Executive Officer Seth Bernstein will join them in Nashville in 2020. The company will invest more than $70 million to set up its Nashville headquarters, the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development said. AllianceBernstein considered 30 cities on factors like cost of living and weather, Bloomberg said. AllianceBernstein has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 on employee rating website glassdoor.com. Bloomberg reports that AllianceBernstein is not the only finance giant to sour on the Big Apple. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has built up operations in Salt Lake City, while Deutsche Bank AG has expanded in Jacksonville, Florida. The Wall Street Journal said the rush to leave New York started after the last financial crisis as finance companies looked to cut expenses and find lower tax rates. The tax plan Congress passed earlier this year is also a factor as many of these companies relied on…

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