Category Archives: Fact Sheets and Reports

sign for the CFPB outside a building

Kraninger Lets Industry “Drive the Agenda” at CFPB Even During COVID-19 Pandemic

Kathleen Kraninger, the current director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  told an audience of bankers at a November  2019 industry gathering that “you are really helping drive the agenda.” Unfortunately for the public and for consumer financial protection, the Kraninger agenda and the Wall Street lobby’s priorities are indeed all too similar, and that has proved true even during the COVID-19 pandemic and massive economic distress it has produced.

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Federal reserve board

Fact Sheet: Private Equity Industry Poised to Profit from the Federal Reserve’s New Lending Programs 

Private equity funds could access government assistance for their portfolio companies while avoiding any responsibility to repay any debt or obligations to the public purse. Private equity firms could also tap government aid to finance leveraged buyout purchases of additional companies, using public money to load target companies with debt and drain their assets while avoiding any responsibility for paying that debt back.

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Fact Sheet: Private Equity Vultures Eye Real Estate During Coronavirus Crisis

Now, with 26 million workers unemployed and countless businesses closing indefinitely, private equity firms are salivating at the potential business opportunities that might arise from the expected economic fallout. Unless we take immediate action to prevent it, private equity firms will take advantage of this unprecedented crisis to make even greater asset grabs.

“Coronavirus distress is the ‘opportunity of the century’ for real estate investors,” according to a recent headline in The Real Deal, a New York real estate news publication. The article quotes Meridian Capital Group’s David Schechtman saying “But I will tell you, real-estate investors — when you take the emotion out of it — many of them have been waiting for this for a decade.”

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a student holding a black backpack standing in front of a brick wall -Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Factsheet: Cancel Federal Student Loans to Provide Short and Long-Term Stimulus Amid Pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating economic impact, Americans for Financial Reform calls on Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to use their authority to cancel federal student loan debt. Cancelling debt would be a powerful and efficient way to immediately relieve pressure on distressed borrowers, boost consumer spending at a time when the economy is contracting, and reduce hardship on people who lose income because of the pandemic and efforts to fight its spread.

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Fact Sheet: Private Equity Overstates Returns, Downplays Risks

The private equity industry promotes itself as serving the investing public — including union and other pension funds — by providing reliably superior returns than the stock market. But the reality is that PE investments are not necessarily better performers, their promises too often rely

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