Researchers at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Global Energy Monitor and Private Equity Stakeholder Project assessed the holdings of 21 private equity firms, overseeing a combined $6tn in assets under management.
“Congress should pressure Postmaster General DeJoy and the USPS Board of Governors to reverse course, and instead of another mail slow down, reinstate the 2012 mail delivery service standards. They must not stray even one step away from USPS’s universal service obligation: to deliver the mail to everyone, in every ZIP code. USPS is a public service for all, and a lifeline for many, especially rural America.”
The Federal Reserve’s 2024 stress-test results, which found that Capital One’s credit card portfolio is increasingly vulnerable to macroeconomic swings that could undermine its financial viability, highlights why federal regulators should block its proposed merger with Discover.
“The major driver of the growth in private credit has always been to get around regulations,” said Andrew Park, a senior policy analyst who focuses on private credit at Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington-based coalition of consumer and investor advocates. He pointed to previous ways risk has shifted to non-bank markets when new rules are imposed. “The answer is not loosening bank regulations but rather properly monitoring and containing the risks in the private-credit market,” he said.
Aditi Sen, managing director of research and campaigns at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund … said KKR’s investment in LNG helped fuel a rapid expansion in the US with negative climate impacts. “Like coal-powered plants — there are examples of debt-driven dividend recaps, saddling portfolio companies with interest payments, charging exorbitant management fees; none of that is going to the type of capital-intensive activity that an actual transition would require,” said Sen.
Doing so would “decrease burdensome energy costs for future homeowners and renters, which in turn may help lower default risks and loan delinquency rates, and set forth a path to stabilize our shaky housing financial system,” said Jessica Garcia, senior policy analyst for climate finance at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “Implementing up-to-date energy codes will help ease the financial strain on homeowners and renters across the country as they fight to remain housed,” Garcia said. “We are encouraged by HUD’s decision, and urge the Federal Housing Finance Agency to follow suit and swiftly adopt the latest energy efficiency codes.”
Given this level of investment, scrutiny of the private-equity insurance strategy is “totally appropriate,” said Patrick Woodall, a senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington nonprofit group that advocates for stronger checks on Wall Street firms.
The recommendation of requiring a minimum number of holdings to qualify as an ETF would also effectively make single-stock ETFs illegal, Park noted. “We decided that recommendation was going to be a distraction,” Park said. “Effectively, the genie is out of the bottle on this.” “There’s a difference between losing money because you made a bad trade and losing money because you didn’t know how the product worked,” Park said.
In the progressive world, the term is often used interchangeably with political education, but the two are not comparable. That’s because political education centers on its content — it is more “what” than “how.” To be clear, political education isn’t exclusive of popular education. If you want to convey the benefits of ranked choice voting or the mutual aid components of the Black Panther Party, you could just as easily stand at a lectern delivering a monologue as you could opt for a popular education approach, grounded in the experiences in the room. The difference is in method more than content. Popular education uses a horizontal learning structure in which everyone in the room is both teacher and student, no matter the issue being addressed.
Sara Myklebust, research director at Bargaining for the Common Good Network, an initiative of labor and community groups, worked with [Patrick] Woodall, [research director at] Americans for Financial Reform, to try to survey units owned by large-scale corporate landlords in major cities across the country in 2019. Myklebust and Woodall were interested in whether they could document the consolidation of the market for single-family rentals, manufactured homes and apartments.