team, Author at Americans for Financial Reform

Joint Statement: Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rev. Willie Gable Jr. Condemn Ongoing Sabotage of CFPB, Demand Pres. Trump Nominate Consumer Advocate as Director

“Under the Trump administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has become the Payday Predator Protection Bureau,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). “Trump and his allies are blatantly trying to dismantle the bureau from the inside. If this isn’t a crystal clear example of the Trump administration governing of, by, and for the powerful rather than of, by, and for the people, then I don’t know what is.”

AFR Statement: Report Mulvaney Backing Away from Equifax Probe Shows Need for Credible CFPB Director

It’s one more reason why it’s so important to have someone with a track record of protecting consumers running the CFPB, not someone who wants to destroy its work.

Joint Statement: Transfer of CFPB Consumer Response Unit Offers No Clear Benefit

Consumer Response has essentially been an independent office housed in the Operations Division. As such, its research on consumer complaint trends has been equally available to all divisions and offices, including, for example, Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending; Research, Markets and Regulations; and Consumer Education and Engagement. Is this transfer designed to diminish the Consumer Response unit’s important role in helping all units of the agency collect and understand the ongoing complaints that consumers raise? What benefit does this transfer provide consumers and will this relocation affect the Complaint unit’s budget?

Joint Statement: Changes to CFPB Fair Lending Office Undermine Anti-Discrimination Work

Fair Lending is a fundamentally important part of the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and of a financial system that works for families and communities. The Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity needs the authority, the resources, and the connections to key levers of change to do its job.

AFR Statement: Appeals Court Decision Knocks Out Longstanding Argument Against CFPB Single Director

Charging that the single director structure — which helps make the bureau an effective consumer regulator, if that director is committed to the public interest — was unconstitutional evolved into a mainstay of attacks from Wall Street, predatory lenders, and their friends in Congress and the administration.

TOWS Brief: Wall Street Makes Bank on Trump

On the first anniversary of the Trump administration, the Take on Wall Street coalition catalogs the ways that Wall Street made bank on Trump in 2017.

AFR Statement: Trump Year One Full of Gifts to Wall Street

From tax cuts to deregulation to changes at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the first year of the Trump administration has been a boon to Wall Street at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Statement: Wall Street Makes Bank on Trump: 2017 in Review

The report includes facts about lobbying spending that hit $2 billion in the last election cycle, and continues unabated, Wall Street executives in the Trump administration and regulatory agencies, tax cut windfalls for the finance industry, and a deregulatory free-for-all. It also includes a case study of how Wells Fargo’s outrageous conduct somehow earned it the distinction of being the biggest winner from the Trump-Republican tax bill.

Joint Letter: AFR, consumer, labor, and economic justice groups urge the NAIC to strengthen best interest standard proposal

View or download PDF version.

AFR Report: Warren Endorses Need for Action on Wall Street Role in Home Rental Market

In the past 10 years, nine big Wall Street firms have fundamentally altered the rental landscape in their targeted cities across 13 states by eliminating the human aspects of the relationship between tenants and their landlord. In some areas, the largest SFR companies own a large percentage of all single family rentals in a given zip code – up to 12.5 percent in some areas.