Category Archives: Letters and Statements

Letter to the Regulators: Letter to the SEC Supporting PCAOB’s Standardized Firm and Engagement Metrics

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, joined by 9 signatories, submitted a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission strongly endorsing the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) proposed standards. The standards would require firms to disclose standardized and comparable metrics that facilitate cross-firm comparisons and assessments of audit quality, providing critical data for investors to make informed decisions. The letter highlights that requiring consistent and comparative metrics will reduce opportunistic disclosures, simplify audit committee oversight, and foster a data-driven approach to regulation and audit quality.

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News Release: Senate Must Reconfirm Caroline Crenshaw as SEC Commissioner

More than 40 organizations are urging the reconfirmation of Caroline Crenshaw for another term at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The presence of principled voices such as Crenshaw’s at the SEC is absolutely critical, especially when the incoming Trump administration has signaled its intent to break from the tradition of selecting candidates on a bipartisan basis.

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IN THE NEWS: Trump eyes pro-crypto candidates for key federal financial agencies (The Washington Post)

“It means that people are going to be more vulnerable to an industry that is rife with fraud, abuse, market manipulation and cyber-breaches,” said Patrick Woodall, the managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform, which advocates for stronger financial regulations. “This is an industry that is extremely volatile, where people take big losses, where market manipulation by insiders is very prevalent.”

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Blog: A Crypto Coup? How Billionaires Are Threatening Democracy & Rewriting the Rulebook of American Politics

Crypto tycoons are storming into U.S. politics and attempting to reshape how we choose our elected officials. And the industry remains mostly controlled by a small group of very wealthy people even though fewer than one-sixth of people have ever owned any cryptocurrency. But crypto tycoons are pouring money into politics, aiming to bypass regulatory oversight, consolidate their power, and restructure American politics for their own benefit.

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News Release: Labor, Advocates Push for Limits on Asset Manager Influence Over U.S. Banks

Today, 38 labor unions, investors, and advocates submitted a letter to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in support of a proposed rule that would increase oversight of asset managers with substantial voting power in banks. The proposal would bolster FDIC oversight when asset managers gain control of over 10 percent of voting securities of bank holding companies with FDIC-supervised subsidiaries.

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In The News: Senators take aim at big private equity landlords as rents soar (NBC News)

As landlords, private equity firms raise rents, impose new fees, skimp on property maintenance and pursue tenants more aggressively in court, the Americans for Financial Reform research noted. “The cumulative effect is a massive transfer of wealth from mainly low- and middle-income renters, who can’t afford the onerous barriers to homeownership, to some of the wealthiest men in America,” it said.

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In The News: Are We Signing Away Our Rights By Clicking Those Boxes? (American Viewpoints)

“From the beginning of this republic, even the most humble citizen was entitled to their day in court and a fair hearing. And at no point, until the creation of forced arbitration did someone say, ‘Hey you can have a right to your day in court except when your complaint is about a big corporation,” said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.

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