“‘Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s reported pick for Treasury Secretary, made himself enormously wealthy by cashing in on the country’s financial collapse,’ the liberal activist Take on Wall Street campaign said in a statement on Tuesday. ‘He purchased a bailed-out bank for pennies on the dollar and then aggressively foreclosed on tens of thousands of families.'”
“[The] question is whether Dodd-Frank will be replaced or just torn down. If Republicans create a regulatory vacuum or simply allow the banks to write their own rules, [AFR’s Marcus Stanley] said, they will have gone too far. ‘It’s obvious that Dodd-Frank is going to come under severe attack both in Congress and the regulatory agencies,’ Stanley said… [T]he first question is going to be, What do you plan to do to actually address these Wall Street abuses? If the answer is, We’re not going to do anything … then that is something we are going to fight really hard on.”
“‘Trump ran an anti-establishment campaign focused on the economy,’ said Alexis Goldstein, a senior policy analyst for progressive nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform. ‘There was a huge focus on fighting for people who were left out. It’s already a betrayal of his supporters to staff up his transition team with hedge fund managers.'”
“A crucial element fueling the rage, in my view, was this: Not one high-ranking executive at a major financial firm was held to account for the crisis of 2008… The first inkling of whether Mr. Trump is truly on the side of Main Street may emerge when his administration sets out to change Dodd-Frank… ‘Are you going to return to the situation under Bush and Clinton where Wall Street wrote its own rules in the back room?” [AFR’s Marcus] Stanley asked. ‘Or are you going to put forward something that constitutes a genuine alternative and that will prevent Wall Street from rigging the economy?’”
“While Trump bashed Wall Street throughout the campaign, the financial services industry is trying to figure out whether his victory, coupled with a GOP-led Congress, could open a path forward to easing regulations… Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, said he expected to play defense on some issues but hoped that the populist pitch made by Trump during the election ‘wasn’t just rhetoric that gets forgotten when you come to DC.'”
“While Wells Fargo has fired workers for their involvement in the scandal, many regional presidents in the community banking segment at the center of the controversy remain in their jobs… Brian Simmonds Marshall, policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, called that ‘disturbing’: ‘It’s not enough only to fire 5,000-plus front-line workers and a handful of managers… and let everything in between stay the same.'”
“A new report released this week by the HedgeClippers campaign shows just how much money is being spent in [the 19th] district by hedge fund managers… $5.5 million [to protect] the carried-interest loophole. ‘[Q]uite often when you have a lot of money coming in from Wall Street… people vote in lockstep with what Wall Street wants,’” says Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Financial Reform.
“[C]onsumer advocates worry that people already contending with the existing process still face an uphill battle. ‘If you do the math, there are well over 80 percent of folks who are eligible that either don’t know to apply or have applied and the Education Department hasn’t done anything with their application,’ said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. ‘I don’t understand why the department is insisting on doing this person by person, instead of just approving students automatically.’”
“U.K. banking rules now provide for unpaid bonus awards to be canceled or reduced, or bonuses to be returned or ‘clawed back’ if misconduct is later uncovered. Adjustments in unpaid bonuses within major U.K. banks tripled to about £300 million in 2014, from £100 million in 2010… ‘On a lot of these cultural issues, it seems like the U.K. is tougher than the U.S.,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, an independent advocacy group for effective financial regulation.”
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received about a million public comments… That figure is the highest in the agency’s five-year history… Consumer groups such as the Center for Responsible Lending and Americans for Financial Reform formed an alliance and ran a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #StopTheDebtTrap and shepherded people to a comment site…”