Ten years after the financial crisis, a majority of members of the Congress that wrapped up work in 2018 voted again and again for bills pushed by the bank lobby that endanger financial stability, undermine consumer and investor protections, and enable racial discrimination in lending. The change in control of the House and a heightened awareness of the dangers posed by these actions provide an opportunity to see what changes in the 116th Congress.
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“Did anyone take Internet Security 101?” says Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “I always tell my elderly parents, whatever you do, don’t click on anything! How do you know it’s legit? How do you know it isn’t a scam?”
“This rule would free up hundreds of billions of dollars in securities and derivatives for proprietary trading purposes, completely outside of Volcker Rule coverage and in fact with an explicit exemption from proprietary trading restrictions,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform. “By simply designating positions as not explicitly held for trading, banks could easily evade the Volcker Rule. These changes spell the end of meaningful constraints on proprietary trading at taxpayer supported banks, and another step in dismantling financial stability safeguards.”
“Kathy Kraninger has effectively committed the Bureau to aiding and abetting the debt trap by removing the most important federal consumer protection against it,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel of Americans for Financial Reform. “Every moment without federal consumer protections on these loans means more consumers are left unprotected from the devastation caused by this predatory industry. This tracker is a numerical representation of the damage her inaction is causing.”
“HUD’s proposed rule makes it virtually impossible for a disparate impact claim to stand in court,” says Linda Jun, senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “By raising the threshold for disparate impact, the new rule creates a nearly unsurmountable bar for plaintiffs to prove discriminatory outcomes and makes it much easier for defendants to shield themselves from any responsibility for discrimination.”
This new data “confirms what advocates in the student borrower advocacy community have been saying for a long time: that student debt has hit crisis levels in the U.S.,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform.
Consumer watchdog groups urged the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in a letter sent today to take action immediately to implement the payment provisions in its payday lending rule, whose compliance date is August 19, 2019.
This new paper does not contradict previous comprehensive studies finding that liquidity in the corporate bond market has been robust and has shown no signs of deterioration over the period in which the Volcker Rule was implemented. The OFR staff working paper does find evidence that banks affected by the Volcker Rule charge significantly lower markups for newly issued bonds they underwrite (that are exempt from most Volcker Rule restrictions on proprietary trading) than they do for other types of bond trades covered by the Volcker Rule.
The Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) Language Access Task Force strongly opposes the decision announced yesterday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to remove the question about a borrower’s language preference from the revised Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA). The Task Force members include the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, the Center for Responsible Lending, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Consumer Action, Empire Justice Center, NAACP, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD), National Consumer Law Center, National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, and National Fair Housing Alliance.
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