Government Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

On New Year's Eve 2005, Justin Rose headed to Camp Lemonnier's cantina for celebratory $2.50 beers with his fellow Marines before heading back to his "hooch" around 1:30 a.m. Sometime after daybreak, Rose woke up to find someone stroking his penis. Disoriented for a moment, he lept down from his raised bunk and gave chase as a man dressed in red dashed out of his quarters and into another tent. He found [Jase Derek] Stanton, dressed in red, feigning sleep in his bed; Rose was certain Stanton was the attacker. So Rose did what he had been trained to do. He went to his team leader, a young corporal, and reported the assault. The first question he heard was: "Are you sure you're not making this up?" Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted – a rate far higher than that of men. But sexual assault of men in the military is also widespread and vastly underreported. Each day, on average, more than 45 men in the armed forces are sexually assaulted, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. For women, it is 53 per day, according to a September 2022 Pentagon report that uses a new euphemism "unwanted sexual contact" as a "proxy measure for sexual assault." Nearly 40 percent of veterans who report to the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, that they have experienced military sexual trauma, or MST – sexual assault or sexual harassment – are men. 90 percent of men in the military did not report a sexual assault they experienced in 2021.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Even for the US, one of few countries that still uses the death penalty, last week was exceptionally violent, with four executions planned in the span of 48 hours. The killings were marred with errors, accusations of racism and discrimination, and claims of innocence. One was called off after officials took more than an hour and were unable to place an IV line. Officials can't seem to carry off an execution in which the right drugs are used, an IV is placed quickly and the inmate doesn't suffer ... but state officials disclose little about who conducts executions or how they are trained. "The recent spate of botched lethal injection executions have shown that, whatever the drug, whatever the protocol, condemned prisoners often spend their final moments in agonising pain and distress," Maya Foa, director of advocacy group Reprieve US, said. “With each gruesome scene in the death chamber, we are witnessing the consequences of persisting with a broken method of execution in real time.” Numerous people on death row suffer from severe mental illness, so [Kat Jutras of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona is] hoping mental health reform can limit the pipeline of people heading towards the execution chamber. "Mental health is not a political issue. There are people on both sides of the aisle who can identify with loved ones suffering from mental health issues," she said. "We can address why our death row has 110 people on it, starting with mental health."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.

The Biden administration told a US judge last week that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, should be granted immunity in a civil lawsuit over his role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That decision effectively ends one of the last efforts to hold the prince accountable for Khashoggi's assassination by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. In July, Biden swallowed his pride and traveled to Saudi Arabia, trying to reset his relationship with a regime he called a "pariah" as a presidential candidate. Biden greeted Prince Mohammed with an embarrassing fist bump, hoping that the photo op would convince the Saudis to increase oil production and lower gasoline prices. By October, the Saudi-led Opec+ cartel did the opposite of what the Biden administration asked – it decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will mean higher global fuel prices this winter. Thanks to the Biden administration's immunity decision, Prince Mohammed now has a level of protection from US legal actions that even Trump did not offer him. The prince's lawyers started seeking immunity in US federal courts in August 2020, when Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official, sued the crown prince in Washington. Aljabri alleged that the royal had dispatched a hit squad to kill him in Canada in 2018, just weeks after Khashoggi's murder. The Trump administration declined to grant Prince Mohammed immunity in that case, and the suit was ultimately dismissed.

Note: U.S. Presidents from both parties continue to coddle up to the Saudi regime -- one of the most repressive regimes in the world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

India has just 144 police officers for every 100,000 citizens. In recent years, authorities have turned to facial recognition technology to make up for the shortfall. India's government now ... wants to construct one of the world's largest facial recognition systems. The project envisions a future in which police from across the country's 29 states and seven union territories would have access to a single, centralized database. The daunting scope of the proposed network is laid out in a detailed 172-page document published by the National Crime Records Bureau, which requests bids from companies to build the project. The project would match images from the country's growing network of CCTV cameras against a database encompassing mug shots of criminals, passport photos and images collected by [government] agencies. It would also recognize faces on closed-circuit cameras and "generate alerts if a blacklist match is found." Security forces would be equipped with hand-held mobile devices enabling them to capture a face in the field and search it instantly against the national database, through a dedicated app. For privacy advocates, this is worrying. "India does not have a data protection law," says [Apar] Gupta [of the Internet Freedom Foundation]. "It will essentially be devoid of safeguards." It might even be linked up to Aadhaar, India's vast biometric database, which contains the personal details of 1.2 billion Indian citizens, enabling India to set up "a total, permanent surveillance state," he adds.

Note: Read an excellent article by The Civil Liberties Union for Europe about the 7 biggest privacy issues that concern facial recognition technology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

What if I told you that a multinational oil company allegedly polluted the Amazon for almost three decades? And that the oil company has spent even more years refusing to accept liability? Or that a US attorney who agreed to represent thousands of Ecuadorian villagers in a lawsuit against that oil company has lost his law license, income, spent hundreds of days under house arrest in New York, and in 2021 was sentenced to six months in prison? From 1964 to 1990, Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, allegedly spilled more than 16m gallons of crude oil – "80 times more oil than was spilled in BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster", according to Gizmodo – and 18bn gallons of polluted wastewater in the Amazon rainforest. The pollution allegedly contaminated the ground and waterways with toxic chemicals that the plaintiffs – mostly Indigenous people and poor farmers – say has caused cancer, miscarriages, skin conditions and birth defects. In 1993, [attorney] Steven Donziger ... began working on an environmental case on behalf of Ecuadorians. In 2011 ... an Ecuadorian court ruled that Texaco, which had been bought by Chevron at this point, was "responsible for vast contamination." PR advisers for Chevron promised to "demonize" Donziger in the public eye. The oil company "hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication" which smeared him, and "put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

Public outrage over how police use force has fueled protests in the streets, spurred calls to cut their funding and ignited broad debates over how to reform law enforcement. Despite this intense focus on the present and future of policing, one key component has remained woefully inadequate, according to a report from a prominent policing think tank: how new officers are trained. Training for recruits "presents an immediate crisis for policing," according to the report from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). The report describes a system that, even after years of push and pull over change, is "built to train officers quickly and cheaply." That system then hurries the new officers onto streets across the United States without helping them develop vital skills, including crisis intervention and communication, that they will need on the job. Police in the United States typically spend about 20 weeks in the academy, the report said, while recruits in Japan might spend up to 21 months training. Their peers in many European countries spend two to three years training. The report also touches on why, despite all the pleas to rethink policing, training remains behind the times in many places. "At many academies," the report said, instruction "is based largely on what has been taught in the past." In many cases, the report continued, academies "seem to rely almost exclusively on current or retired law enforcement officers to develop their training curricula," even though these people lack backgrounds in designing course instruction.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

In July 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly disclosed findings of a potential increase in four types of serious adverse events in elderly people who had had Pfizer's covid-19 vaccine: acute myocardial infarction, disseminated intravascular coagulation, immune thrombocytopenia, and pulmonary embolism. Little detail was provided, such as the magnitude of the increased potential risk, and no press release or other alert was sent to doctors or the public. Eighteen days later, the FDA published a study planning document (or protocol) outlining a follow-up epidemiological study intended to investigate the matter more thoroughly. This recondite technical document disclosed the unadjusted relative risk ratio estimates originally found for the four serious adverse events, which ranged from 42% to 91% increased risk. More than a year later, however, the status and results of the follow-up study are unknown. The agency has not published a press release, or notified doctors, or published the findings ... or updated the vaccine's product label. Cody Meissner, a paediatrician and member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said ... "One of the great problems was the suppression of opposing voices to various recommendations and that’s going to cause extraordinary harm ... everyone is aware that there are going to be side effects from any vaccine and as time goes by, we’re going to find out more and more about those side effects."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what's known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet's infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly. The company's Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which ... has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. TrustCor's products include an email service that claims to be end-to-end encrypted, though experts consulted by The Washington Post said they found evidence to undermine that claim. A test version of the email service also included spyware developed by a Panamanian company related to Packet Forensics. A person familiar with Packet Forensics' work confirmed that it had used TrustCor's certificate process and its email service, MsgSafe, to intercept communications and help the U.S. government catch suspected terrorists. The physical address in Toronto given in [TrustCor's] auditor's report, 371 Front St. West, houses a UPS Store mail drop.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The United States has fought more than a dozen "secret wars" over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice. Through a combination of ground combat, airstrikes, and operations by U.S. proxy forces, these conflicts have raged from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, often completely unknown to the American people and with minimal congressional oversight. These clandestine conflicts have been enabled by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as well as the covert action statute, which allows secret, unattributed operations, primarily conducted by the CIA. [The new] analysis is particularly illuminating in the case of Somalia, where the United States developed two key proxy forces, the Danab Brigade and the Puntland Security Force. The CIA began building the Puntland Security Force in 2002 to battle the Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab and later the Islamic State in Somalia, or ISS. The force was transferred to U.S. military control around 2012 and went on to fight alongside U.S. Special Operations forces for a decade. [The Brennan Center's Katherine Yon] Ebright notes that the proxy fighters were "largely independent of the Somali government, despite being an elite armed brigade and one of Somalia's most capable special operations units. And their relationship with U.S. forces was long kept secret, with U.S. officials disavowing the presence of military advisers in Somalia until 2014."

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in five African countries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Authorities swiftly called the death a homicide. The victim was 44-year-old Michael Williams. Days later, law enforcement agencies announced they had arrested and charged a 31-year-old army veteran, Steven Vogel, with murder. Williams had been strangled, according to the medical examiner's office. Authorities arrested and charged three others with helping Vogel move the body. The case attracted national attention. Michael Williams was Black, and his body was burned and dumped in an almost-exclusively white part of Iowa. The four people arrested were white. These events occurred 15 weeks after Minneapolis police publicly murdered George Floyd. And yet, law enforcement immediately declared that no evidence suggested the murder had been motivated by racism. Williams's family and other members of central Iowa's Black community weren't convinced. The simple fact a white man hanged a Black man with a rope and then set him on fire in an easily visible spot – with three other white people helping cover up the murder – was telling. Data analyzed by the Guardian reveals this to be common: victims' loved ones clearly see racist motives, while law agencies often don't. From the outset, authorities rejected a racial motive. "They never pursued it," says Paula Terrell, Williams's aunt. "They just kept saying ‘it's a love triangle.'" In fact, Williams's murder was one of several incidents in central Iowa that targeted Black people in short sequence.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

Shanghai Disney has become the latest high-profile venue to shut its gates thanks to China's strict zero-Covid policy, trapping visitors inside. People have been told they will not be allowed out of the theme park until they can show a negative test. China's controversial zero-Covid policy has already seen millions of people repeatedly locked down, sometimes in unusual locations. The sudden nature lockdowns have seen people fleeing shops - including a Shanghai branch of Swedish furniture giant Ikea - and workplaces as they try to avoid being trapped inside. However, those awaiting their freedom at Shanghai Disney can console themselves with one positive: rides are continuing to operate for those trapped inside The Happiest Place on Earth. As well as the theme park, surrounding areas such as the shopping street were also abruptly closed. Videos posted on Chinese social media site Weibo showed people rushing to the park's gates following the announcement but finding them already locked. Posting on Chinese social media site WeChat, the Shanghai government said the park was barring people from entering and those inside could only leave once they had returned a negative test result. It added that anyone who has visited the park since Thursday must provide three negative test results over three consecutive days. Millions of people are under 200 different lockdowns in China, as of October 24, as the country of 1.45 billion consistently records more than 1,000 new Covid cases a day.

Note: By comparison, the U.S. had about 40,000 cases per day in late October. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

On April 17, 2018, Terry Albury appeared in a federal court in Minneapolis, where he pleaded guilty to charges of leaking classified information to the press. The allegations – that Albury downloaded, printed and photographed internal F.B.I. documents on his office computer, sending some of them electronically to a journalist and saving others on external devices found in his home – resulted from a 17-month-long internal investigation by the F.B.I., prompted by two Freedom of Information Act requests by a news organization ... in March 2016. Nine months after these FOIA requests were made, a trove of internal F.B.I. documents shedding new light on the vast and largely unrestricted power of the post-9/11 F.B.I. was posted on the investigative-journalism site The Intercept. The cache included hundreds of pages of unredacted policy manuals, including the F.B.I.'s byzantine rule book, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, exposing the hidden loopholes that allowed agents to violate the bureau's own rules against racial and religious profiling and domestic spying as they pursued the domestic war on terror. In October 2018, he was sentenced to four years in prison. Albury says he felt a moral imperative to make his disclosures, motivated by his belief that the bureau had been so fundamentally transformed by Sept. 11 that its own agents were compelled to commit civil and human rights violations.

Note: Listen to Albury talk about his experiences in this podcast. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump's spurious claims about a "terrorist organization" he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting. An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden ... details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump's acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of ... George Floyd. The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump's reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars' worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump's false claims about "Antifa." The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the "friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their ... First Amendment speech activity."

Note: Read about the FBI's use of entrapment to manufacture terrorist plots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new "Disinformation Governance Board": a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate – the war on terror – has been wound down. Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. Discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information. There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated.

Note: The Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board has been paused, not stopped. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

On Monday morning, 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the White House that attempted to gingerly open a conversation about a potential diplomatic end to Russia's war on Ukraine. The door was slammed shut by the evening, met with enough fury to elicit a "clarification" in the form of a statement from caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. "Let me be clear," Jayapal said in a statement issued just before 7 p.m., "We are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom in the face of the illegal and outrageous Russian invasion, and nothing in the letter advocates for a change in that support." On Tuesday afternoon, Jayapal followed the clarification by fully withdrawing the letter, saying it was "released by staff without vetting." That the letter was met with fierce opposition is a measure of the space available for debate among congressional Democrats when it comes to support for the war and how it might be stopped before it turns nuclear: roughly zero. "I have voted for every defense package to Ukraine and stand firmly for Ukraine's sovereignty," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a letter signer, told The Intercept. "It should not be controversial to say we need to explore every diplomatic avenue to seek a just peace." "The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks," the letter read.

Note: The powerful war machine can compromise even those with good intentions. Read an excellent article calling for urgent diplomacy on both sides of the political aisle to promote peaceful and democratic outcomes. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Ashwaq Abdel Kareem heard the roar of a jet plane that foretold an airstrike. It was near midnight on June 1, 2015. Ashwaq, her husband, and five children were in the backyard. Far above Ashwaq and her family, a Dutch F-16 fighter jet released a bomb that whistled down to hit a car-bomb factory in the center of Hawija's industrial district. The F-16's mission was coordinated by the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS and was planned by the U.S. military. From 2014 to the present day, between 8,000 and 13,000 civilians have died as a result of bombing by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, according to the monitoring organization Airwars; the coalition only acknowledges the deaths of 1,417 civilians. At the height of the bombing in 2017, as the coalition bombed tightly packed urban areas like Mosul, at least 9,000 civilians died. Yet only one civilian received compensation, although the U.S. military did distribute a limited number of condolence or "ex gratia" payments – which are voluntary payments and not an admission of legal liability – reportedly to the families of around 14 victims. Despite its involvement [with the Hawija bombing], the United States has not offered an apology or individual compensation. This is consistent with U.S. policy that has made compensation for civilians extremely rare. The only legal way for civilians to pursue compensation in the U.S. has been through the Foreign Claims Act, but that excludes compensation for death or injury during combat, making victims of the Hawija bombing ineligible.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

Gov. Ron DeSantis ... held a news conference two months ago, announcing that the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security had found roughly 20 people who voted illegally in 2020. DeSantis, surrounded by uniformed officers, assured the public that the suspects were in custody and would be prosecuted. The Tampa Bay Times published a report yesterday, highlighting the nature of those arrests, alongside a video of police bodycam footage that's painful to watch. Politico reported a week after the arrests that several of those taken away in handcuffs had been "notified by official government entities they were eligible to vote." Floridians ... seemed utterly baffled as to why they were being taken away in handcuffs, insisting they had cast perfectly legal votes – not only because Floridians approved a state constitutional amendment in 2018, restoring voting rights to many felons, but also because they'd been explicitly told by officials that they could legally cast ballots.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in elections from reliable major media sources.

Since Buzzfeed reported in June that employees of TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance had access to US consumer data, TikTok has been the focus of rare bipartisan calls for regulation and inquiry. Those inquiries became more pressing when in July, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, called Chinese espionage the "greatest long-term threat to our nation's ... economic vitality". TikTok is a relatively new player in the arena of massive global social media platforms but it's already caught the eye of regulators in Europe. New laws around child safety and general internet safety in the UK and the EU have forced the company to become more transparent about the way it operates and the way content spreads on its platform. In the US, moves to rein in the video platform have gained momentum only relatively recently, although there's little debate that the round of regulatory pressure is warranted. With 1 billion users, the platform, which uses an algorithmic feed to push users short-form videos, has had its fair share of run-ins with misinformation, data privacy and concerns about child safety. Experts the Guardian spoke with did not question the cybersecurity threat China posed. However, some said they worried regulators' hyper-focus on TikTok's China connection could distract from other pressing concerns, including TikTok's algorithm and how much user data the company collects, stores and shares. There are currently no federal regulations that protect such information.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Detroit's city council will soon vote on whether to spend millions in federal cash meant to ease the economic pains of the coronavirus pandemic on ShotSpotter, a controversial surveillance technology critics say is invasive, discriminatory, and fundamentally broken. ShotSpotter purports to do one thing very well: telling cops a gun has been fired as soon as the trigger is pulled. Using a network of microphones hitched to telephone poles, rooftops, and other urban vantage points, ShotSpotter is essentially an Alexa that listens for a bang rather than voice commands. Despite ShotSpotter's corporate claims of 97 percent accuracy, the technology's efficacy has been derided as dangerously ineffective – a techno-solutionist approach to public safety. ShotSpotter's opponents in Detroit agreed that gun violence is a serious problem but said Covid-19 relief money would be far better spent on addressing the social ills that form the basis of crime. "If people had jobs, money, after-school programs, housing, the things that they need, that's going to reduce gun violence," said Alyx Goodwin, a campaign organizer with Action Center on Race and the Economy. Snyder pointed to the fundamental irony of diverting public money billed as form of relief for the pandemic's downtrodden to surveil those very same people. ShotSpotter explicitly urges cities to tap funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, intended to salve financial hardship caused by the pandemic, to buy new surveillance microphones.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The Federal Reserve, far from the independent institution it often touts itself as, is under intense pressure at all times from massive commercial banks and other financial institutions advocating for favorable regulations, according to federal lobbying disclosures reviewed by The Intercept, as well as interviews with former Fed and other finance employees. The Federal Reserve has come under scrutiny in recent months for its aggressive interest rate hikes. The Fed's own research has warned that its aggressive policy mirrors a similar one that caused a "severe recession" under Paul Volcker in the 1980s. Even the United Nations ... recently warned that the Fed's rate hikes risk "inflicting worse damage than the financial crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 shock in 2020." Besides setting monetary policy, the Fed is also tasked with regulating commercial banks. The intense lobbying the Fed is subjected to is targeted at these banking regulations. Paid lobbyists make their case on behalf of massive financial corporations in the same fashion as K Street lobbyists hawking their wares to members of Congress. In 2022 alone, over 120 groups reported lobbying the Fed on issues ranging from credit card fees to cryptocurrency to sprawling monetary policy initiatives such as mortgage finance. Postings on the Federal Reserve website in the past year record meetings with Discover Financial, Student Loan Servicing Alliance, National Bankers Association, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.