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Sorry Stevie Wonder, We Do Need to Blame the Banks Responsible for the LA Fires
The four banks that sponsored the FireAid benefit concert were among the world’s largest fossil fuel industry financiers from 2016—when the Paris climate accord went into effect—through 2023.
Feb 14, 2025
Stevie Wonder was one of more than two dozen superstars who performed at FireAid, a six-hour benefit concert held late last month to raise money for Los Angeles wildfire victims and, according to event organizers, support “long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.” Viewed by more than 50 million people around the world, the benefit raised more than $100 million.
Before launching into “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” “Superstition,” and “Higher Ground,” Wonder called for unity in the face of the disaster. “In this world today, we have no time for blaming. We have no time for shaming,” he said. “We need to have prayer and come together as a united people of the world.”
Wonder was likely alluding to the thoroughly debunked lies uttered by then-President-elect Donald Trump, who falsely accused then-President Joe Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of mismanaging resources.
If someone on the FireAid stage had remarked how ironic it was that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs sponsored the event, 50 million people would have heard about the destructive role they are playing, probably for the first time.
Neither Biden, Newsom, nor Bass were at fault, but with all due respect to Mr. Wonder, it is long past time to blame and shame those who are truly responsible for fueling the climate crisis.
One could of course start with Trump, whose first administration rolled back or dismantled nearly 100 environmental safeguards and who—on day one of his new term—ordered federal agencies to begin gutting protections for the air, water, public lands, and the climate. Republican members of Congress, who have amassed 82% of oil and gas companies’ campaign contributions over the last two decades, are also to blame. And then there’s the fossil fuel industry itself, which was aware of the threat its products pose as early as 1954 but publicly denied the science for decades and funded disinformation campaigns to obstruct and delay government climate action.
Other responsible parties, notably banks and insurance companies, are less obvious. Paradoxically, a handful of them were among FireAid’s corporate sponsors, all of which presumably underwrote the concert to demonstrate their bona fides as caring, public-spirited companies. Joining American Express, Kaiser Permanente, and 20 other corporations were four banks—JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and U.S. Bancorp—and a financial services company—Capital Group—whose investments undermine the concert’s goal of preventing future fire disasters. In fact, the tens of billions of dollars they collectively invest in fossil fuel-related companies annually will make fire disasters in Southern California—and everywhere else—more likely to happen.
Climate Change the ‘Main Driver’ of Wildfires
The science is clear, regardless of what Donald Trump may claim. Primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, climate change is the “main driver” of an alarming increase in wildfires in the Western United States over the last four decades, according to the findings of a 2021 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“During 1984 to 2000, 1.69 million acres burned over 11 states,” NOAA’s PNAS study press release pointed out. “It doubled in size to [approximately] 3.35 million acres during 2001 to 2018. In 2020, the total annual burned area jumped to 8.8 million acres, more than five times of that in 1984 to 2000.”
“Even though wetter and cooler conditions could offer brief respites,” the press release added, “more intense and frequent wildfires and aridification in the Western states will continue with rising temperatures.”
A study published last November in Science Advances found that temperatures out West have indeed continued to rise since NOAA’s 2021 study, causing drought even when the region experienced normal precipitation due to moisture loss from “evaporative demand,” or atmospheric thirst. Once again, researchers predicted more severe, longer-lasting droughts covering wider areas as temperatures increase.
Just two months after the Science Advances study came out, Los Angeles County was engulfed in flames, prompting a multinational team of scientists at World Weather Attribution to produce a quick analysis. They found that, without a doubt, climate change “increased the likelihood of wildfire disaster in highly exposed Los Angeles area.”
The cost of that disaster was astronomical. A preliminary estimate of damages from the LA wildfires by AccuWeather ranged from $250 billion to $275 billion—more than the losses from the entire 2020 U.S. wildfire season. Other analysts estimate that the wildfires will cost insurers anywhere from $10 billion to $40 billion.
Burning Through Billions
The four banks that sponsored FireAid were among the world’s largest fossil fuel industry financiers from 2016—when the Paris climate accord went into effect—through 2023, according to the most recent “Banking on Climate Chaos” annual report, published by a handful of environmental groups in May 2024.
JPMorgan Chase: Although JPMorgan’s investment of $40.8 billion in fossil fuel, utility, and pipeline companies in 2023 was roughly half (in inflation-adjusted dollars) of what it invested in 2016, it is still the largest underwriter of fossil fuel deals. From 2016 through 2023, the bank—the largest in the United States—invested $430.9 billion (in unadjusted dollars), more than any other bank worldwide. Its top client was ExxonMobil, which received $15 billion, more than twice the $6.48 billion the bank poured into TransCanada Pipelines, its second largest investee.
Besides its relatively paltry donation for LA fire victims, JPMorgan is retreating from international efforts addressing the climate crisis.
Goldman Sachs: Goldman Sachs, which invested $184.9 billion from 2016 through 2023, was the 14th largest investor over that eight-year span. Its two biggest clients were the Saudi Arabian Oil Company ($4.38 billion) and Royal Dutch Shell ($3.2 billion). In 2023, Goldman Sachs invested $8.8 billion and was the fourth largest financier of fracking companies.
UBS: The Swiss-based UBS’s investments in fossil fuel-related companies dropped precipitously in 2023 to $8.8 billion, likely due to the bank’s dramatic profit swings, but between 2016 and 2023, it was the world’s 10th largest funder. Over those eight years, it invested $210.7 billion and was the biggest financier of metallurgic coal companies. UBS’s leading investee was Calpine Corporation, the largest U.S. natural gas and geothermal electricity provider, which received nearly $4 billion. Other top clients included Duke Energy ($3.25 billion); Parsley Energy, a natural gas developer ($3.4 billion); and Buckeye Partners, an oil pipeline company ($3 billion).
U.S. Bancorp:U.S. Bancorp—the fifth-largest U.S. bank—was the 28thlargest financier, investing $97.27 billion over the eight years covered by the “Banking on Climate Chaos” report. Among its top investees were Occidental Petroleum ($2.2 billion) and Devon Energy ($1.9 billion). In 2023, U.S. Bancorp invested $12.77 billion and was the ninth biggest financier of fracking companies. (Besides sponsoring FireAid for an undisclosed sum, the company—which has about 200 branches and 4,000 employees in the Los Angeles area—donated a meager $100,000 to the United Way of Greater Los Angeles to help fire victims.)
Capital Group: The fifth financial institution that sponsored FireAid,Capital Group, is one of the world’s largest asset managers. As of May 2024, it held more than $173 billion in shares and bonds in 162 fossil fuel-related companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips, according to the 2024 report “Investing in Climate Chaos,” which did not document investments on an annual basis.
The Energy Transition Could Take ‘Generations’
JPMorgan, by far the worst of the five financial titans sponsoring FireAid, posed as a good corporate citizen by offering LA fire victims mortgage payment relief and donating $2 million to the American Red Cross, California Community Foundation, and United Way of Greater Los Angeles. But that’s chump change for a bank that posted a record $56.8 billion profit last year, a 19% increase from 2023.
Besides its relatively paltry donation for LA fire victims, JPMorgan is retreating from international efforts addressing the climate crisis. Just days before the bank announced its donation, it announced it was leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-sponsored organization of more than 140 banks from 44 countries that have pledged to align their investments and loans with the goal of attaining net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. A year before, in February 2024, JPMorgan quit Climate Action 100+, a $68-trillion investor organization that advocates for reining in world’s largest corporate carbon emitters to reduce financial risk.
JPMorgan says it left CA 100+ because it hired its own climate risk analysts, but it walked away shortly after the investor group began requiring members to broaden their corporate disclosure and implement climate transition plans, according to ESG Dive, a trade journal. The bank did not cite a reason for leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, but news outlets reported that Republican politicians had been pressuring banks to quit even before Trump, a notorious climate science denier, won the election last November.
A JPMorgan spokesperson promised that the bank would “continue to support the banking and investment needs of our clients who are engaged in energy transition and in decarbonizing different sectors of the economy.” And, to its credit, JPMorgan had already pledged to “finance and facilitate more than $2.5 trillion”—including $1 trillion for renewable energy and other “green initiatives”—by 2030 to “help advance long-term climate solutions and contribute to sustainable development.” In 2023 alone, the company invested $300 billion.
But the company remains the top fossil fuel industry financier and will continue to invest, regardless of the consequences. At a September 2022 congressional hearing, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who made $34.5 million that year, was unequivocal. When asked if his company has a policy against funding oil and gas projects, he responded: “Absolutely not. That would be the road to hell for America.” More recently, in April 2024, the company issued a report warning that it will take “decades, or generations, not years” to phase out fossil fuels and hit net-zero targets.
Fossil Energy Companies Are ‘Hugely Important’
Goldman Sachs, the sixth largest U.S. bank, announced in December 2019 that it would no longer invest in oil development in the Arctic or in thermal coal mines worldwide, a first for a U.S. bank. It also said it would invest $750 billion in sustainability financing, which includes green energy, by 2030.
Environmental groups cheered, but stressed that the bank had a long way to go to align its investments to meet net-zero goals. It still does.
Like his counterpart at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon rejects calls to sever his bank’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. “Traditional energy companies are hugely important to the global economy they are hugely important to Goldman Sachs,” he said in 2023, when he made $31 million, a 24% jump from the previous year. “We are all going to continue to finance traditional companies for a long time.”
Likewise, Goldman Sachs quit CA100+ (last August) and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (last December). “We have made significant progress in recent years on the firm’s net-zero goals and we look forward to making further progress, including by expanding to additional sectors in the coming months,” the bank said when it departed the alliance. “Our priorities remain to help our clients achieve their sustainability goals and to measure and report on our progress.”
Name, Blame, and Shame
Last year was the hottest on record, beating out the next warmest year—2023. Meanwhile, the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred over the last 10 years. In 2024, global temperatures exceeded the pre-industrial (1850 to 1900) average by 2.63°F (1.46°C), only slightly less than the Paris climate agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting the worldwide temperature increase to less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
The hotter it gets, the more likely such devastating events as the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene will be decidedly worse. More neighborhoods will be wiped out. More people will lose their homes. More will die.
Regardless, the world’s largest banks have failed to keep their pledge to support the central aim of the Paris accord, according to a new report by research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. BNEF analysts calculated that the ratio of financing green energy and infrastructure relative to financing fossil fuel-related ventures must reach 4 to 1 by 2030 to keep any temperature rise below 1.5°C. Since 2016, BNEF found, banks have invested nearly $6 trillion in fossil fuels but only $3.8 trillion in green energy. That’s a trifling 0.63 to 1 ratio. For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, only 63 cents went to clean energy.
The banking ratio is only slightly better now. In 2023, it was 0.89 to 1, according to BNEF, a minor improvement over 2022, when it was 0.74 to 1. And for all that JPMorgan crows it invests in “green initiatives,” its energy-supply banking ratio in 2023 was a measly 0.80 to 1, and it is doubtful that the bank will start investing four times more in green enterprises than in fossil fuel companies anytime soon.
Regardless, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and the other financial firms that sponsored FireAid and donated to local nonprofits aiding fire victims want to be seen as good guys. They correctly assume that the general public has no idea that their investments are ruining the planet. After all, the mainstream news media rarely, if ever, report on this topic, and the trade press that does is mainly read by industry insiders.
So no matter how heartfelt, Stevie Wonder—a celebrated humanitarian in his own right—was wrong. We should call out the people and corporations responsible for the climate crisis. If someone on the FireAid stage had remarked how ironic it was that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs sponsored the event, 50 million people would have heard about the destructive role they are playing, probably for the first time. A column like this one, unfortunately, does not have that kind of reach.
This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.
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Research Exposes Trump Inaugural Fund as 'Cesspool of Special Interest Financing'
"The record-shattering abuses of the 2025 Trump-Vance Presidential Inaugural Committee, Inc. should signal the immediate need for legislation to prevent this influence peddling," said one ethics expert.
Jan 15, 2025
With Inauguration Day less than a week away, a watchdog group on Tuesday published research shining light on the unprecedented level of financial support President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural fund has received from corporations and executives seeking to court favor with the incoming administration.
The new research from Public Citizen includes a tracker that lists known corporate donations or pledged contributions to Trump's inaugural committee, which is tax-exempt and not subject to contribution limits.
Amazon, Apple, Chevron, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Google, Meta, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the pharmaceutical lobby, Pfizer, Microsoft, and Coinbase are among those that have pumped money into Trump's inaugural fund, which has raked in a record-shattering $150 million since Election Day—and could bring in over $200 million by January 20.
"These million-dollar donors come from a small class of very wealthy industries in Big Tech, cryptocurrency, government contractors, and others with lucrative contracts or business pending before the federal government," Public Citizen found. "Some of the biggest donors had long been critics of Trump, especially following the January 6 Insurrection by Trump supporters, and who are now fearful of retributions by a vengeful president."
Some of the companies that have donated to the inaugural fund are also facing federal investigations, amplifying suspicions that the contributions were made with the goal of receiving favorable treatment from the next administration.
"The record-breaking cesspool of special interest financing for the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee raises serious concerns about the ability of corporations and wealthy special interests to purchase influence over public policy or lucrative government contracts," Craig Holman, a government ethics expert at Public Citizen, said in a statement Tuesday."The record-shattering abuses of the 2025 Trump-Vance Presidential Inaugural Committee, Inc. should signal the immediate need for legislation to prevent this influence peddling."
"The possibility for corruption exists any time an officeholder accepts large donations from those who have business pending before the official."
Trump's inaugural fund has easily surpassed the then-record-setting $107 million he raised for his inauguration in 2017, The New York Timesreported earlier this month. On Monday, the Timesreported that "Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire oil and gas executive who helped bankroll Donald J. Trump's campaign and stands to profit from his energy policies, is hosting an exclusive fossil fuel industry celebration on Inauguration Day."
"Among the invited guests to Mr. Hamm's celebration is Doug Burgum, Mr. Trump's pick to run the Interior Department," according to the newspaper.
The president-elect has openly boasted that prominent figures in corporate America—from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—have lined up to show support for his second administration, which is set to be packed with billionaires and others with close business ties. Trump is reportedly keeping close track of major companies that have yet to donate to his inaugural fund.
Public Citizen noted Tuesday that "while the self-serving motivations of inaugural donors has a long and troubling precedent, the scope of donations and, in many cases, the fear of retribution driving the donations to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee represents a worrying shift."
"Buying access to the president and the president's inner circle is the name of the game," the group says in its new research brief. "For corporations and wealthy special interests attempting to influence public policy or secure lucrative government contracts, writing big checks to Trump's inaugural committee—or any presidential inaugural committee—provides a bonanza of access to leading government officials and influence over public policy. This is a level of influence peddling only available to those who can afford to pay the price and is denied to those who are not wealthy."
To "ensure that undue influence-peddling through Inaugural donations is mitigated," Public Citizen called on lawmakers to pass legislation banning corporate and lobbyist donations to inaugural funds, implementing contribution limits, and strengthening disclosure requirements, among other reforms.
"The possibility for corruption exists any time an officeholder accepts large donations from those who have business pending before the official," Public Citizen said. "Congress should end the double standard for presidential inauguration fundraising. The celebration of an election victory should be viewed as part and parcel of the process of selecting our president."
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135.9 Million Reasons Why the Working Class Is So Angry
Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work or a stock buyback is announced, they are likely about to get kicked in the face.
Oct 06, 2024
Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go.
In total, that's 135.9 million workers who know all too well the pain and suffering of a major disruption to their employment.
Working people understand that the periodic ups and downs of the economy can legitimately lead to job loss. But they also know that in many cases the reason they lost their job was not mismatches in supply and demand. Rather, their jobs were sacrificed to satisfy out and out corporate greed.
Private Equity and Greed
Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work, trouble lies ahead. Just ask the 33,000 workers at Toys 'R' Us, who lost their jobs when that fabled company was driven into the ground by KKR, a huge private equity company. KKR bought the toy giant for $6 billion in 2005. Five billion dollars of the purchase price was financed with debt, which KKR put on the Toys 'R' Us books.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (especially not the labor-averse space mogul Elon Musk) to design simple solutions that would provide some protection against needless mass layoffs.
Then the rape and pillage commenced, as Toys 'R' Us slashed costs to service the debt, pay KKR hefty management fees, and quickly fall behind its competition, Walmart and Amazon. Aliya Sabharwal, writing in the LA Times last year, tells us:
KKR and its partners sold off Toys ‘R’ Us real estate, pocketed the money and forced the retailer to lease back its buildings. Along the way, KKR and the other firms paid themselves $250 million in “management fees” and big bonuses to hand-picked executives — right before Toys ‘R’ Us entered bankruptcy.
This kind of corporate looting by private equity has, since the 1980s, happened thousands of times in all sectors of the economy, leading to the needless loss of millions of jobs. Researchers writing for the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago have found that, on average, employment shrinks by 13 percent when a private equity firm buys a public company. As Forbes notes,
All too often when private equity professionals tout their cost cutting strategies, they do not mention that cost cutting means firing people and taking away their livelihoods.
Stock Buybacks and Greed
Workers are also learning that when hedge funds buy up company stock and demand stock buybacks, there’s job trouble ahead. Just ask the 32,000 workers at Bed, Bath and Beyond, who saw their jobs evaporate to finance stock buybacks, over and over until the company was forced into bankruptcy and liquidation.
A stock buyback, which was essentially illegal until 1982, is a form of stock manipulation. A company uses its funds, or borrows money, to go into the market place and buy up its own shares of stock. By doing so, the number of shares in circulation goes down, while the earnings per share goes up. The stock price rises even though no new value was added to the company. The rise in the share price rewards company executives, who are mostly paid with stock incentives, and moves corporate wealth into the pockets of Wall Street investors.
Starting in 2004, Bed, Bath and Beyond spent $11.8 billion on stock buybacks that, in the short term, boosted the company’s share price and enriched the Wall Street stock-sellers who had pressured the company to buy back those shares. Even as the company struggled in 2022, it spent $230 million on stock buybacks, loading the company up with even more debt to finance them. In April 2023 the company declared bankruptcy. That July, the last store of what had been, in 2011, a chain of 1,142 stores closed
The same thing is happening right now with John Deere, the huge farm equipment manufacturer. Deere wants to move 1,000 jobs to Mexico, ostensibly to remain competitive in the international farm equipment market. But Deere is competitive now. The company posted $10 billion in profits in the 2023 fiscal year and paid its CEO $26.7 million.
The real reason Deere wants to discard workers and flee to Mexico is to finance the $11.6 billion in stock buybacks it committed to over the past year.
Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people.
In 2025, Goldman Sachs estimates that corporations will conduct more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks. Tens of millions of jobs will be sacrificed to shift all that money to the richest of the rich.
Solutions Are Easy to Find, But Political Will is not
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (especially not the labor-averse space mogul Elon Musk) to design simple solutions that would provide some protection against needless mass layoffs. Here’s a list:
- The Security and Exchange Commission, which deregulated stock buybacks in 1982, should basically outlaw them again by limiting stock buybacks to no more than 2 percent of corporate profits. Today, nearly 70 percent of corporate profits go to stock buybacks.
- Debt used in leveraged buyouts should be limited to no more than 10 percent of the purchase price. That would protect workers from being sacrificed to service enormous debt loads.
- Add two simple clauses to the $700 billion of taxpayer money that goes for federal purchases of goods and services. It should read:
- No taxpayer money shall go to corporations that lay off taxpayers or conduct stock buybacks.
- For those companies receiving taxpayer money, layoffs must be voluntary, not compulsory, as is already the case for many white-collar employees.
Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people. Alas, we all know deep down that politicians are not about to bite the Wall Street hands that feed them. In the meantime, millions of workers will continue to be sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.
When no political party dares to challenge Wall Street’s war on workers, there’s only one remaining alternative: working people need to build their own political movement just as the Populists did in the 1880s. There are 135 million reasons for doing so, and soon.
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