{"id":4924,"date":"2012-06-22T03:35:29","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T03:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=4924"},"modified":"2012-06-11T21:28:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T21:28:52","slug":"year-3-month-6-day-22-the-check-is-in-the-mail-and-i-love-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/year-3-month-6-day-22-the-check-is-in-the-mail-and-i-love-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 3, Month 6, Day 22: The Check Is In The Mail&#8230;And I Love You."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/06\/11\/business\/banks-look-to-burnish-their-images-by-backing-green-technology-firms.html\">Color me unconvinced:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Call it the greening of Wall Street.<\/p>\n<p>In the wake of a $30 billion commitment to new environmental investments by Wells Fargo in April and a $40 billion promise from Goldman Sachs this month, Bank of America will announce a 10-year, $50 billion initiative of its own on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Facing bad publicity on practically every front, the big banks are highlighting what has quietly become a hot growth area in recent years \u2014 backing projects and companies in sectors like renewable energy, emissions reduction and reduced-carbon transportation.<\/p>\n<p>Bank of America officials said the initiative encompassed steps including underwriting initial public offerings for so-called green companies, making loans to consumers who buy hybrid vehicles and helping developers to retrofit old factories as well as investing in renewable energy. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ll believe it once I see Bank Of America stuff and mount Don Blankenship on a pedestal in their lobby, naked, with a carrot up his keister.  Sent June 11:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s difficult to describe $50 billion over the next decade as a half-hearted first step, but that&#8217;s exactly what Bank of America is doing.  With its long history of providing finance for the fossil fuel industry, BoA has an environmental record entitling it to more than a modicum of suspicion.  Yes, energy efficiency (mostly from reducing its own emissions), energy infrastructure, transportation, and the other areas mentioned are important and worthy of support \u2014 but the bank&#8217;s continued funding of the coal industry (almost seven billion dollars in 2010 and 2011 alone) provides powerful evidence that this is a Potemkin investment strategy designed to deflect criticism without making any meaningful changes.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement&#8217;s timing (one week before the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) is also suggestive of a public relations strategy rather than a robust commitment to protecting our environment at a time when the climate crisis looms over our posterity. <\/p>\n<p>Warren Senders\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Color me unconvinced: Call it the greening of Wall Street. In the wake of a $30 billion commitment to new environmental investments by Wells Fargo in April and a $40 billion promise from Goldman Sachs this month, Bank of America will announce a 10-year, $50 billion initiative of its own on Monday. Facing bad publicity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,44],"tags":[467,663,160,861],"class_list":["post-4924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-politics","tag-assholes","tag-capitalism","tag-economics","tag-hypocrisy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4925,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions\/4925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}