Category Archives: AFR in the News

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AFR in the News: Wall Street reform groups blast House reg bills (The Hill)

“[B]ackers of tough Wall Street rules see the legislation as opening new doors for industry to take regulators to court, or requiring watchdogs to jump through even more hoops to write rules. ‘These bills, in slightly different and overlapping ways, basically put another thumb on the scale,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. ‘But I would say it’s a lot heavier than a thumb. It’s another fist on the scale.'”

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AFR in the News: Wall Street Gears up as White House Pushes Retirement Fund Rules

“Our experience has been that industry dramatically misrepresents the content and the impact of the rule, by making unsubstantiated claims” before it is released, said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of groups that advocates for stronger regulation of Wall Street. “You are going to get a lot of fear-mongering.”

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AFR in the News: Republicans and Wall Street Say To Hell With Protecting the Public! (Moyers & Co.)

“Since December, Congress has twice passed measures to weaken regulations in the Dodd-Frank financial law that are intended to reduce the risk of another financial meltdown. In the last election cycle, Wall Street banks and financial interests spent over $1.2 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions, according to Americans for Financial Reform. Their spending strategy appears to be working. Just this week, the House passed further legislation that would delay by two years some key provisions of Dodd-Frank. “[Banks] want to be able to do things their way, and that’s very dangerous.” MIT economist Simon Johnson tells Bill.

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AFR in the News: Republican Assault on Dodd-Frank Act Intensifies (Financial Times)

“Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, which backs tougher regulation of Wall Street, said banks and their Republican allies were seeking to chip away at Dodd-Frank with a series of piecemeal delays and limits on regulatory authority. ‘The strategy is to take many of these bills and amendments and combine them together into packaged legislation. In combination, these so-called technical fixes will very significantly undermine Dodd-Frank and make it impossible to effectively police the financial sector,’ he said.”

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AFR in the News: In New Congress, Wall St. Pushes to Undermine Dodd-Frank Reform (NY Times)

“The financial industry has been methodical, drafting technically complicated legislation that can pass the heavily Republican House with a few Democratic votes. And then, once approved, Wall Street has pushed to tack such measures on to larger bills considered too important for the White House to block. ‘This all works together: Put it up for stand-alone vote, get some Democrats on it, and then when you push it onto a must-pass bill, say it’s a bipartisan bill that’s already passed,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform.

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AFR in the News: Main Street Banks Play the Wall Street Lobbying Game (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

“PNC, the nation’s 10th largest bank, hasn’t spent the past few years just building itself into a financial behemoth. Like many other banks, it’s built up political capital too. And last year, it spent some of that currency to help roll back a regulation [that] barred banks with federally insured deposits from engaging in certain potentially high-risk financial transactions… Swaps have legitimate uses, but ‘when things go wrong in this area, they go very very wrong,’ said Marcus Stanley [of] Americans for Financial Reform.”

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AFR in the News: Kicking Dodd-Frank in the Teeth (NY Times)

“We’re going to see repeated attempts to go in with seemingly technical changes that intimidate regulators and keep them from putting teeth in regulations,” predicted Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform… “If we return to the precrisis business as usual, where it’s routine for people to accommodate Wall Street on these technical changes, they’re just going to unravel the postcrisis regulation piece by piece.”

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AFR in the News: Pay-Disclosure Advocates Chafe at SEC Rule Delays (MarketWatch)

Supporters of a rule that would require public companies to disclose the ratio between executive and median employee pay say the Securities and Exchange Commission should move soon to enact the regulation. “It’s one of the simplest, most straightforward Dodd-Frank rules,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform.

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AFR in the News: Banks Win More Time to Sell Private Equity Stakes (USA Today)

Americans for Financial Reform… called the Fed action disappointing and said it “raises serious questions about regulators’ intentions to properly enforce the Volcker Rule.” “Since proprietary trading can occur through the mechanism of external funds, the delay in divestment requirements for covered funds will greatly weaken the enforcement of other crucial parts of the Volcker Rule as well,” the organization said.