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“Department enforcement plays a critical role in ensuring banks and payment processors meet [their] legal obligations,” the lawmakers say in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. “Unfortunately, recent cases demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences when those obligations are not met. Accordingly, we urge the Department to enforce vigorously applicable laws pertaining to payment fraud, money-laundering, and other illegal payments…”
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While the Administration wants to increase the CFTC’s budget, its $280 million request for FY 2015 is $35 million less than last year’s proposal, The American Banker points out. “We have the mandate, but not the money, to do the job,” Commissioner Bart Chilton said in a press release. Americans for Financial Reform, the story adds, has described underfunding of the CFTC as “a backdoor attack on derivatives regulation.”
Timothy Massad, nominated to lead the CFTC, “has drawn skepticism from [public] interest groups about his views on regulation,” according to Bloomberg, which cites Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform. “He’s really something of a blank,” Stanley said. “He doesn’t have a policy or substantive record at least in the areas regulated by the CFTC.”
AFR submitted a letter to the SEC expressing deep concern that the rules proposed by the Commission regarding the JOBS Act fail to deliver important investor protections.
Increased funding of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is a crucial piece of Wall Street reform. Here’s why.
“Refusing to adequately fund the CFTC is a backdoor attack on derivatives regulation. The agency needs the resources to meaningfully implement and enforce the new rules that Congress directed it to write. Those rules are essential to the mission of bringing basic standards of transparency and safety to markets that, left unchecked, were at the heart of the financial crisis that did so much damage to our economy.”
AFR submitted a comment letter to the financial stability board on plans for the aggregation of global derivatives data.
“Many millions of people have already benefited from the Consumer Bureau’s rules, enforcement actions and online complaint system. Polls show that a large majority of Americans strongly approve of what this important new agency has been doing… And yet, 232 members of the House of Representatives voted today for legislation designed to systematically undermine this first-ever federal agency with a mandate to prioritize fairness and transparency over short-term financial-industry profits.”
AFR and more than 15 consumer organizations submitted a letter to the CFPB calling for stronger obligations on debt collectors and creditors, including in particular requirements that they actually have and maintain accurate records of debts, and that they cannot collect without real documentation that people owe and how much, limits on contacts with borrowers, and an end to harassment threatening conduct, including manipulation of credit reporting.
