AFR in the News Archives - Page 19 of 58 - Americans for Financial Reform

AFR in the News: There’s a newish cop on the beat as Department of Education launches enforcement unit (Washington Post)

“The department must move quickly to discharge the debt of all Corinthian students,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform. “Hundreds of thousands of borrowers from Corinthian remain on the hook for federal student loans. … despite the fact that the illegal actions identified in department enforcement actions were endemic throughout the entire chain.”

AFR in the News: More oversight needed to curb abuse, reform hedge-fund industry (Orlando Sentinel)

“Hedge funds were major traffickers in the toxic securities that brought down the financial system eight years ago. Because many of them now market aggressively to pension funds and institutional investors, ordinary retirement savers can lose big when hedge funds fail to generate returns extravagant enough to justify their extravagant charges. More and more of these funds use stealth tactics to build up potent but undetected market positions, enabling them to aggressively bring about the results they’re seeking — results that serve their interests at the consistent expense of workers, communities, and the wider society.”

AFR In the News: Breaking Up America’s Big Banks is Key to Averting Future Financial Crises (Between the Lines)

“Cutting these big banks down to size would have a lot of positive impacts. It would lessen the political power of the financial industry, it would put government in a position [to] let a bank fail and let that bank be restructured to be a healthy entity and experience the consequence of its actions… There’s enormous amounts of money at stake and very complex and technical rules. The banks can fund a constant lobbying presence to hammer on all of these rules when often the general public might not even know these battles are going on, so it is a tough fight but I believe the public is on the side of stronger action.” — Marcus Stanley, Policy Director, Americans for Financial Reform

AFR In the News: Not much unites Democrats and Republicans. Anger at Wall Street does. (Washington Post)

“Eight years after the start of the Great Recession, and seven years since the Troubled Asset Relief Program was implemented, the anger at major financial institutions has only grown — in both parties…In 2013, a Reuters-Ipsos poll of more than 1,400 Americans found that just 22 percent approved of TARP — years after the banks had been stabilized. Last year, when Lake Research Partners polled on behalf of the progressive Americans for Financial Reform, it found 70 percent agreeing with the statement that ‘most people on Wall Street would be willing to break the law if they believed they could make a lot of money and get away with it.'”

AFR in the News: Should We Break Up the Big Banks? (MSNBC)

“I think you need an all-of-the-above approach: you use the law that bears Barney Frank’s name, which requires the breakup of any bank that is too big to fail without harming the economy; you pass new legislation, the 21st Century Glass Steagall Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation – Senator Warren’s on it, and Senator McCain is on it. And then you need to involve the public and the grass roots in order to build this new voice that’s going to hold these people accountable.” — AFR’s Alexis Goldstein

AFR in the News: Omnibus Offers Little to Love for Wall Street, Financial Industry (Inside Sources)

“’Wall Street and the financial industry were pushing once again for major rollbacks of financial regulation, and to block consumer and investor rights,” said [AFR Executive Director] Lisa Donner… ‘And on this they failed this time, and the rest of us won.’”

AFR in the News: Coalition calls for banking services at USPS

“The Post Office is not generally where you go to get a paycheck cashed, but the Campaign for Postal Banking wants to change that. A coalition of industry and community stakeholders, the Campaign delivered petitions with more than 150,000 signatures to the U.S. Postal Service headquarters on Dec. 17, asking Postmaster General Megan Brennan to establish some financial services in post offices around the nation.”

AFR in the News: Congressional Republicans using fear of a government shutdown to help big banks (Vox)

“Right now any bank over $50 billion dollars in size automatically becomes a SIFI [systematically important financial institution]. Richard Shelby, the [Senate Banking Committee] chair… originally called for raising that threshold to $500 billion. But Republicans also want to weaken the ability to designate non-banks as SIFIs. As Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform told me, ‘The FSOC designation procedure is already lengthy and time-consuming and includes numerous procedural protections for firms under consideration. These bills are designed to make it essentially unworkable.'”

AFR in the News: Corinthian students to receive $28 million in loan forgiveness (Washington Post)

“Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, says the department has done a poor job of reaching out to Corinthian students who might be eligible for relief… ‘[T]he department should be pursuing a much more comprehensive, multi-pronged outreach strategy in order to ensure that all students victimized by Corinthian are aware of their legal right to pursue debt cancellation.’”

AFR in the News: Dozens Of Democrats Are About To Vote For Racial Discrimination At Car Dealerships (Huffington Post)

“‘Car dealers and lenders are attacking the guidance because they do not want the CFPB to enforce antidiscrimination laws in car lending,’ the nonprofit group Americans for Financial Reform wrote in a September letter to lawmakers. ‘They have known for decades that car dealer markups lead to discriminatory lending, and they would prefer the CFPB ignore this particular injustice.'”