Mulvaney chose Blankenstein as the policy associate director for supervision, enforcement, and fair lending. Under Mulvaney the CFPB has restructured the main office for fair lending, expressed interest in moving away from a key legal test for fair lending, and curbed enforcement of rules on predatory lenders that often target communities of color.
The banks that caused the 2008 financial crisis with their greed and recklessness are even bigger now than they were ten years ago. Separating risky investment banking and “boring” commercial banking will help prevent financial crises – and bailouts – and refocus banks on serving their customers. Not only would this make bank activities less risky, it would make the institutions smaller, breaking up megabanks and leveling the playing field for smaller banks.
The SEC’s proposed “Regulation Best Interest” is anything but, a plan for creating a veneer of investor protection that would fail to chase bad practices out of the industry that cost savers $40 billion per year. Many savers fall victim to brokers who steer them into investments that pay lucrative fees but don’t generate the best possible return for investors.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund sent a letter to the SEC regarding proposed amendments to the Commission’s Whistleblower Program rules. While we generally support a few of the proposed amendments, we are concerned that a number other proposed changes would initially undermine the Whistleblower
Ten years after the financial crisis, a majority of members of Congress have voted again and again for bills pushed by the bank lobby that are dangerous for our financial stability, undermine consumer and investor protections, and enable racial discrimination in lending. The report, entitled “Where They Stand on Financial Reform,” lays out how each lawmaker voted.
This comprehensive guide details how members of the 115th Congress voted on bills and nominations related to financial reform.
One year ago, Equifax announced the worst data breach in U.S. history, a breach that compromised the personal information of over 150 million consumers. Even though it has been a year since the breach, Equifax still has not paid any price for putting so many
Americans for Financial Reform sent a letter to members of the House Financial Services Committee urging them to vote against 6 bills under consideration in today’s markup—HR 2128, HR 5534, HR 6021,HR 6741, HR 6743, and HR 6745. These bills would reduce protections for consumers,
AFR joined 27 organizations in signing onto this letter drafted by US PIRG urging the House Financial Services Committee to oppose HR 6743, a bill that replaces an existing narrow preemption provision with a sweeping provision that could not only eliminate all state data breach notice, data security and other privacy laws as they apply to financial institutions as broadly defined, but also forestall further state innovation to protect their citizens from future privacy and data security threats. One year after the Equifax breach, we are especially concerned that the committee is considering weakening data security and data breach laws, instead of strengthening them or passing legislation to make companies like Equifax more accountable to their victims.