“In considering the topic of today’s hearing – the implications of the Financial Stability Board for U.S. growth and competitiveness – I believe the starting point should be the actual powers and responsibilities of the Financial Stability Board (FSB). “
“Today’s hearing asks us to consider the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on small banks. I want to make two broad points. First, community banks face economic headwinds that are unrelated to Dodd-Frank, connected both to long-term trends and to the effects of the financial crisis itself. Second, the big picture is that community banks have returned to profitability under Dodd-Frank. In 2015, over 95% of community banks earned a profit – up from just 78% in 2010, the year Dodd-Frank was passed.”
“We oppose these efforts to roll back post- crisis reforms. It is particularly ironic that they are being advanced in the name of “increasing liquidity”. A central lesson of the crisis is that market liquidity can be excessive, and that such excessive liquidity leads to disastrous market crashes that have far more damaging liquidity effects than those that might be created by prudent limits on excessive leverage and risk-taking in normal markets.”
“Chairman Neugebauer, Ranking member Clay, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform. AFR opposes HR 2287 (NCUA Budget Transparency Act), HR 2896 (the TAILOR Act), and HR 3340 (the Financial Stability Oversight Council Reform Act). We also have concerns regarding HR 2209 (requiring the treatment of certain municipal debt obligations as level 2A assets under liquidity rules).”
“Over the forty years since the existing DOL rule was written, retirement markets have transformed and workers have become overwhelmingly reliant on self-directed savings. Due to the loopholes in the current rule, brokers providing advice on such self-directed savings can easily evade the fiduciary protections that Congress intended to provide to workers saving for their retirement through employment-based plans.”
AFR’s Policy Director, Marcus Stanley, testified before the Senate Banking Committee regarding capital formation and reducing small business burdens.
Wallace Turbeville, Senior Fellow at Demos and member of AFR, testified before the House Agriculture Committee voicing AFR’s opposition to legislation that would significantly alter the Dodd-Frank Act in ways that effectively deregulate the financial sector and work against the goals of a safer, more stable, and more fair and efficient financial system.
A Financial Speculation Tax ( or Financial Transaction Tax) would be a tiny tax on Wall Street trading in stocks, bonds, foreign currency, derivatives, and other complex financial products.
Click here to view an August 29 letter from the Federal Reserve asking Capital One Financial Corp. where businesses overlap and what their market share is in these areas.
Everyone (except Wall Street bankers) seems to be outraged about Wall Street banks, which made billions by trading complex confections of dicey mortgages and then passed us the tab when the investments went belly up. But what about the agencies that bestowed triple-A ratings on