Biden is Weaponizing Financial Regulators for His Eco-Left Agenda

March 1, 2021

In 2013, the Obama Administration imposed Operation Choke Point, which compelled banks to treat firearms dealers, payday lenders and other disfavored types of companies as high-risk. This ensured that they couldn’t get loans, and ultimately sparked outrage among the public and media. Last week, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on “Climate Change and Social Responsibility: Helping Corporate Boards and Investors Make Decisions for a Sustainable World.” If the hearing is any indication of what’s to come, the Biden Administration is destined to make the same mistake as President Obama.

The Biden Administration is actively attempting to place climate change at the forefront of financial regulation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen even announced her department will create a “climate hub,” complete with a “climate czar.” This plan will do nothing to “save the planet,” but it will create an additional, effective tax on consumers.

Gregory Zerzan, former acting assistant Treasury secretary, writes in The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. financial regulators have zero expertise in assessing environmental laws and policies. They don’t employ climate scientists and have no better way of predicting the impact on the financial system of climate change than they have of predicting the weather. 

Traders employ the most complex modeling systems in the world, yet markets still crash all the time. So, it is undeniable that President Biden’s plan to ask Wall Street to predict climate change is destined to fail.

Which leads to the suspicion that financial regulations targeting climate change aren’t meant to protect the financial system; they are meant to influence who gets access to capital and who doesn’t.

After one month in office, it is clear that President Biden is even more committed to enacting an eco-left agenda than many predicted. Still, using financial regulators to address climate change by restricting loans to industries they deem as “not green enough,” is radical even by this administration’s standards.