team, Author at Americans for Financial Reform

In The News: Zombie debt – CFPB proposal could trick consumers into bringing dead debts back to life (The Washington Post)

It is “disappointing,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform. The CFPB should bar the collection of debts that have passed their statute of limitations altogether. “The whole point of statute of limitations is that the government has decided that the debt is no longer collectible,” Jun said. “If you can’t be sued on it, why are you getting mail on it?”

News Release: CFPB Fails to Protect Consumers from Abusive Collection of Time-Barred Debt (Again)

The supplemental rule states that debt collectors must provide consumers with specific disclosures when collecting debt that is beyond the statute of limitations (time-barred debt). The proposed disclosures would be in addition to the CFPB’s proposal announced in May to prohibit collectors from filing or threatening a lawsuit on a time-barred debt, but only if the collector “knows or should know” that the legal time limit to sue has expired.

News Release: Internet, Federal Authorities Must Seek Answers Before Any Sale of Dot-Org

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which coordinates the operation and maintenance of the internet’s domain name system, should make sure that the transaction will “not imperil the future operation of .ORG” before allowing it to proceed.

Letter to Regulators: AFREF-EFF Letter to FTC on Private Equity takeover of .ORG

“PIR LLC will have to generate substantial additional revenue to service the debt which could force PIR LLC to take advantage of its monopoly position to raise prices to unsustainable levels, impose new service charges, reduce technical upkeep that could impair web connectivity or non-profit email traffic, or pursue other business strategies that could undermine the independence of non-profits including suspending or transferring domain names, in effect a censorship-for-profit strategy that has been used by other domain registries and internet companies.”

Letter to Regulators: Assessing Costs and Benefits of Regulations

The AFR Education Fund wrote a letter to the FDIC regarding the analysis of costs and benefits, in which we urged the regulator not to impose a false and excessively narrow framework of “cost-benefit analysis” on their decisions. Download the letter here.

Fact Sheet: Private Equity Overstates Returns, Downplays Risks

The private equity industry promotes itself as serving the investing public — including union and other pension funds — by providing reliably superior returns than the stock market. But the reality is that PE investments are not necessarily better performers, their promises too often rely

Fact Sheet: Private Equity-Owned Payday Lenders Profit Off Trapping People in Debt

Private equity has pushed into the high-priced consumer loan industry, offering payday and other consumer loans that profit off trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt. Private equity firms own over 5,000 storefront payday and online lenders that often make loans at 300% annual percentage

Take Action: National Call-in Day for the Veterans and Consumer Fair Credit Act

Today is the big day! Get the word out to your networks to call your congressional representatives TODAY to ask them to support HR 5050, the Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act! The Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act is a bipartisan bill that extends the Military

In The News: ‘Super Swampy’: Kelly Loeffler Faces Tricky Ethical Dilemma as Senator (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, which lobbies for stricter market regulation, put it more simply. Loeffler’s situation, he said, is “super-swampy.”

Fact Sheet: Kraninger Lets Industry “Drive the Agenda” at CFPB

Kathleen Kraninger, the current director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told an audience of bankers at a November 2019 industry gathering that “you are really helping drive the agenda.” Unfortunately for the public and for consumer financial protection, the Kraninger agenda and the Wall Street lobby’s agenda are indeed all too similar. Since the Senate confirmed Kraninger on a party-line vote, she has steered the CFPB in an anti-consumer direction, making it easier for Wall Street and predatory lenders to rip people off and to discriminate against people of color.