Wall Street is accused of many things — some legit, some not — but flying under the radar is its alleged watchdog, the federal government, which is actively utilizing an egregious form of blackmail that makes banks’ impropriety look like child’s play. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce adviser Andy Koenig makes a startling revelation of the federal government’s forcing large banks to fund leftist fads in the name of “social justice.” Here’s how Koenig describes it:

“The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to ‘identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing’ in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.”

Koenig adds, “Combined, the banks must divert well over $11 billion into ‘consumer relief,’ which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. Yet it is unknown how much, if any, of the banks’ settlement money will find its way to individual homeowners. Instead, a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list.” Some of the groups include La Raza, the National Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition — entities with an obviously leftist bent. The total windfall is unclear, but these and other leftist groups have benefited handsomely off the $11 billion the government has managed to purloin from the nation’s largest banks.

This sounds appalling — and indeed it is — but it’s not without precedent. Consider that something similar happened with Obama’s infamous “stimulus” package. The near-trillion dollar injection of taxpayer funds went almost exclusively toward funding Obama’s leftist cronies. As much flack as banks receive, their indiscretions are nothing compared to what the feds are doing behind the scenes.