Trump regulators vow to end left-wing ‘shakedown’ of US banks
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Jonathan Gould called it a shakedown, and honestly that's the right word for it. For decades, activist groups have been able to walk into merger reviews and branch-expansion applications and essentially hold them hostage until a bank agrees to fund whatever pet project or grant program the group wants. Banks paid because fighting it in the regulatory process cost more than writing the check.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould has vowed to shut down what he calls a decades-long “shakedown” racket in which left-wing activist groups have long been accused of squeezing billions from Wall Street banks.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Jonathan Gould called it a shakedown, and honestly that's the right word for it. For decades, activist groups have been able to walk into merger reviews and branch-expansion applications and essentially hold them hostage until a bank agrees to fund whatever pet project or grant program the group wants. Banks paid because fighting it in the regulatory process cost more than writing the check. That's not community reinvestment. That's a toll booth built on the side of a law that was supposed to fight redlining, not fund NGOs.
The Community Reinvestment Act was written to make sure banks served the neighborhoods they took deposits from. Somewhere along the way it became a lever that outside groups could pull to extract commitments with almost no transparency about where the money actually went or whether it did what it promised. Banks rarely fought back publicly because picking a fight with an activist coalition during a merger review is a good way to get your application slow-walked for a year.
What Gould is describing isn't a culture war talking point, it's a market distortion. If a bank has to budget for "activist tax" the same way it budgets for compliance costs, that money isn't going into small business lending or lower fees for depositors. It's going into whatever cause has the leverage that quarter. Ending that isn't deregulation for its own sake. It's just closing a loophole that let unaccountable groups act as a private toll authority over the banking system.
The real test is whether this actually changes how merger reviews get conducted, not just how they get talked about. Regulators have promised crackdowns before and then let the same informal pressure campaigns run through the same side channels. If Gould's OCC actually rewrites the playbook so banks aren't negotiating with activists under duress, that's a genuine win for anyone who uses a bank account. If it's just a press release, nothing changes and everyone goes back to paying the toll.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.