In The News: How Private Equity Firms Will Profit From COVID-19 (The American Prospect)
Unless Congress and regulators act, private equity will shed its nonperforming assets and feast on new ones. J. Crew is the latest example.
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NEWS RELEASE: Private Equity Looting Drove J. Crew Bankruptcy
Private equity firms loaded J. Crew with debt and hid assets away from investors and creditors.
Polling Memo: Strong Support for Capping Interest Rates Amid Pandemic
Americans of all partisan identities, and across all regions of the United States, strongly support enacting new consumer protections on high-interest lending during the coronavirus crisis. Americans are highly supportive of prohibiting all high-interest loans during the crisis and of capping interest rates for consumer loans, according to a new bipartisan poll from Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting.
J. Crew Succumbs to Bankruptcy after Private Equity Debt, Financial Looting
Preppy retailer cannot survive retail and coronavirus economic downturn saddled by private equity-imposed financial burdens.
Letter to Regulators: Suspend CFPB Rollback of Payday Loan Protections
[T]he process of rolling back the mandatory underwriting requirement provisions of the 2017 small-dollar lending rule was, at best, highly improper. We urge you to suspend the finalization of the rule pending a full investigation of the facts. There is a strong case to be made that the CFPB needs to restart the regulatory process entirely.
Letter to Congress: Renewed Call for Credit and Debt Protections in COVID-19 Relief
Letter calling on Congress to include consumer protections in COVID-19 relief
Joint Letter: Letter to Housing Regulators on Tenant Protections in CARES Act
Joint letter asking FHFA, HUD, VA and USDA to provide tenants with a mechanism to identify whether their apartment, home, or manufactured housing is covered by the tenant protections in the CARES Act
NEWS RELEASE: Decision to Block Private Equity Takeover of Dot Org a Victory for Nonprofits
Yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected the proposed private equity takeover of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit that manages the non-commercial, charity, and non-profit internet domain registry for all Dot-Org websites. The decision recognized that the private equity debt loads and extractive business model would hinder Dot-Org’s ability to serve its non-profit clients without raising prices, compromising service, creating new revenue streams that comprise users’ data and privacy, or otherwise imposing unfair costs on 10 million organizations.
Joint Letter: Letter to FHA Urging Greater COVID-19 Protections for Borrowers
Coalition letter to FHA on clarifying and improving protections for borrowers facing hardship related to covid-19.
In The News: Trump Appointees Manipulated Agency’s Payday Lending Research, Ex-Staffer Claims (The New York Times)
Linda Jun, a senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform, a consumer advocacy group: “To this day, despite many people asking, they haven’t provided anything about the basis for changing this rule beyond some vague references to new research. It’s hard to see the reversal as anything other than political.”