admin, Author at Americans for Financial Reform

Joint Letter to CFPB: An Inquiry Process Weighted in Industry’s Favor

“The RFIs pose questions that are almost entirely from an industry perspective and are insufficiently specific to elicit meaningful comment. The RFIs hint at changes desired by industry without providing enough detail to inform members of the public who do not have experience with the internal workings of the Bureau or the implications of the questions. This process weighted in industry’s favor is not consistent with the CFPB mandate to focus on consumer protection.”

AFR in the News: SEC Seeks to Require Brokers to Put Their Clients First (NY Times)

“’The standard of conduct the agency has articulated appears ambiguous at best,’ Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement. ‘It doesn’t simply ban the sales quotas and other compensation practices that lead brokers to put their clients into high-fee, lower-yielding investments.’”

AFR in the News: Senate Votes to Ease Restrictions on Auto Lending Discrimination (NY Times)

“‘“By voting to roll back the CFPB’s work, senators have emboldened banks and finance companies to engage in racial discrimination by charging millions of people of color more for a car loan than is justified,’ said Rion Dennis of Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. ‘Lawmakers have also opened the door to challenging longstanding agency actions that are crucial to protecting workers, consumers, civil rights, the environment and the economy.’”

AFR in the News: Consumer watchdog becomes alphabet soup of controversy (Washington Post)

Swapping “Bureau” from back to front is not a simple word shuffle, said Lisa Donner, executive director for the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. “Doing that signals you want to take the emphasis away from serving consumers — which unfortunately is what Mulvaney’s been doing in many ways — and put it on ‘this is a bureaucracy’,'” Donner said.

AFR in the News: Mulvaney’s Pay-to-Play an “undermining of democracy” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Americans for Financial Reform reported that the financial sector spent $2 billion on political activity in the 2016 election cycle, including $1.1 billion in campaign donations and the rest for lobbying. That’s $3.7 million for every member of Congress.

AFR Backgrounder: Randy Quarles Testimony and Big Bank Regulation

AFR released the document below to provide context on the Congressional testimony of Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision Randy Quarles, and highlight several areas which we believe Congress should question him about. AFR Backgrounder on Quarles Testimony

AFR in the News: During tenure working for banks, Tim Pawlenty thrilled Wall Street, angered consumer advocates (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

“Across party and regional lines, most people think Wall Street has too much influence in Washington. And they think that because it does,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a consortium of labor unions, consumer groups, liberal think tanks and organizations like AARP.

Stop the Debt Trap Statement: By Going to Court, Predatory Lenders Aim to Keep Distressed Borrowers in Debt

“Payday lenders have spent millions lobbying for rules that would let them exploit consumers, so it’s no surprise they are launching a lawsuit against the CFPB rule, which is about the most sensible consumer protection imaginable. It would require lenders to assess a borrower’s ability to repay a loan so they don’t fall into a cycle of debt, nothing more,” said Lisa Donner, Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform.

Letter to Regulators: AFR urges the Dept of ED not to create barriers to emergency relief

Americans for Financial Reform wrote to the Department of Education to voice concerns with two applications they have proposed for higher education institutions seeking access to emergency relief funds. In addition to creating barriers to accessing the funds, the forms are not available in Spanish, which will preclude potential applicants in Puerto Rico from accessing needed funds.

Joint Statement: In Message to Congress, Mulvaney Betrays Mandate to Protect Consumers

“Like other federal regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is supposed to give regular updates to Congress on the work it has done to fulfill its statutory mandate. Under Mick Mulvaney, the consumer watchdog has used its just-released semiannual report for a very different purpose: to urge Congress to take away its power to fulfill that mandate.”