By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Throughout his presidency Donald Trump’s mannerisms have been far different than his predecessors, but many have never gotten over his winning the 2016 presidential election over rival Hillary Clinton.  His critics have sought to vehemently resist his economic reform and deregulation polices and used every obstacle they can in stopping his economic agenda.

By opposing Trump’s polices, critics have used a tool that was perfected by the Obama administration by utilizing the banking system as a legal instrument in targeting solvent businesses. The Obama administration began a program called Operation Choke Point to deny businesses they deemed undesirable access to capital in the banking services.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. labeled certain businesses as “high risk,” as unelected regulators targeted firearms and ammunition dealers, check-cashers, payday lenders, fireworks vendors and any other businesses they deemed undesirable.  This has now extended to the U.S. energy sector.

Unelected regulators without congressional authority or anything emanating from the courts have decided to place a black mark on any business they deemed undesirable by making it “unacceptable for an insured depository institution” to provide them any financial capital.

House Democrats realized what they couldn’t accomplish through legislation by eliminating fossil fuels have now succeeded in putting pressure on the major banks to curtail the financing America’s domestic energy industry.  The new strategy is to utilize a new version of Operation Choke Point by stealth to destroy the U.S. energy industry and other undesirable businesses they despise.

The final presidential debate by President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden placed energy front and center but what wasn’t mentioned would a Biden presidency use the regulatory system to shutter the U.S. energy sector?  This was accomplished by the Obama-Biden administration.

A poignant example is the controversial Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, which requires banks to meet the “credit needs” of their “entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.”

In the 1990’s bank regulators began utilizing CRA to place undue pressure on the major banks to make subprime loans.  Former Texas Republican U.S. Senator Phil Gramm and Michael Solon a financial analysist with US Policy Metrics both co-authored an article titled, “The Plot to Politicize Banking” that Congress used quotas to force government-sponsored enterprises to buy these loans, and regulators set capital standards to induce banks to hold them. By 2008, roughly half of all outstanding U.S. mortgages were high-risk, as measured by down payments and creditworthiness. The federal government itself guaranteed, issued or held 76% of subprime loans. The term “subprime” originated from the implementation of the CRA.

A prominent investment banker told James Freeman who authored a column titled, “Trump’s Next Great Hire” that funding from giant U.S. banks for U.S. oil and gas projects is drying up. Energy companies now have to pay higher rates for loans–if they can find them at all–and more expensive financing is a brutal burden with oil around $40 per barrel. The i-banker warns that California’s “rolling blackouts” could be a preview for consumers nationwide if banking giants will only lend to alternative energy companies.

Democrats have aggressively signaled they want the nation to head in the direction of renewable energy and away from fossil fuels as Biden-Sanders unity task and the Democratic Party platform documents.

Acting Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Brian P. Brooks, which is an independent bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury responded to a letter by Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan that he had “hoped that the banking industry’s experience with, and the eventual discrediting of, Operation Chokepoint would be a sufficient object lesson about the perils of discriminating against businesses that, while unpopular to some, are nevertheless legal for all and demanded by many in our market economy.”

As Gramm and Solon mentioned that to curb this abuse and encourage sounder lending, the comptroller of the currency proposed new benchmarks last month to measure CRA compliance and require full reporting and accountability. His reforms represent an essential step toward relieving the pressure banks face to lend to politically favored, uncreditworthy entities—the policies that helped cause the subprime crisis.

Many were highly critical of this proposal as the mainstream media portrayed this as an attack on low income neighborhoods, but a Federal Reserve Board member proposed an alternative option that largely keeps intact the Obama administration’s CRA polices.

The Trump administration ended Operation Choke Point, but would a Biden administration re-start this operation again? Democrats have joined with progressive political activists in an effort to block financial capital from going to legal businesses through political intimidation.

Massachusetts’s Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren who some have speculated could be the next Secretary of the Treasury in a Biden administration has openly stated that banks and asset managers should deny capital to the energy sector.

Last year J.P. Morgan announced that it will spend $750 billion over ten years on sustainable finance projects, restrict financing to all new oil production and exploration in the Arctic, and impose stricter lending requirements for coal companies. In a letter to investors earlier this year, Blackrock—the world’s largest asset manager— CEO Larry Fink said the company will make “sustainability integral to portfolio construction and risk management,” exit “investments that present a high sustainability-related risk, such as thermal coal producers,” launch “new investment products that screen fossil fuels,” and strengthen “our commitment to sustainability and transparency in our investment stewardship activities.”

Is Congressional progressive political activism duplicating a Chinese model of banking were the government pressures banks to loan capital to businesses of dubious financial solvency?

Does anyone remember Solyndra where the Department of Energy approved a $535 million loan guarantee and later defaulted on taxpayer funds? Under Biden will the U.S. repeat this mistake?

Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee have begun to lay the ground work to force the largest U.S. banks to align their business strategies with the Paris climate agreement, would this continue under a Biden administration? Would regulation be enacted to force banks to comply? Would a Biden administration use the banking sector to curtail financial capital from going to the energy sector and give favorable financing to renewable energy companies?

Would a Biden administration require the banking sector and capital management firms to restrict financial capital to businesses that progressives deem undesirable in meeting their social justice criteria?

It would be interesting to know?