AFR released the document below to provide context on the Congressional testimony of Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision Randy Quarles, and highlight several areas which we believe Congress should question him about. AFR Backgrounder on Quarles Testimony
A new report from Americans for Financial Reform and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project documents how the private equity industry has driven the growth — and abuses — of the for-profit higher education industry.
On the first anniversary of the Trump administration, the Take on Wall Street coalition catalogs the ways that Wall Street made bank on Trump in 2017.
The briefing paper linked below uses Penn-Wharton and IRS data to show how the financial sector is a big winner from the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with almost $250 billion in tax benefits over the next decade flowing to financial firms
The slide presentation linked below documents AFR’s findings on the 2017 CCAR stress tests. AFR Assessing the 2017 Stress Tests A Medium blog post is also available here: https://medium.com/@RealBankReform/stress-tests-less-stressful-than-ever-fbe68b8e161a
“Community Banks Have Returned to Profitability: The percentage of community banks that are profitable has increased every year since 2009. For the year 2015, over 95% of the nation’s 5,880 community banks showed a profit. This is up from 78% in 2010, the year Dodd-Frank passed.”
“Here are some of the major goals that the financial industry and its political allies hope to achieve through language attached to end-of-year appropriations bills. This list does not provide an exhaustive list of potential financial regulatory riders to funding bills, but does highlight the potential riders that have recently been most prominent in the debate. “
“Large regional banks like Washington Mutual, Countrywide, and Wachovia all failed during the financial crisis and placed a major strain on the financial system when they did so. These banks also played an important role in the epidemic of irresponsible mortgage lending leading up to the crisis.”
“Community Banks Have Returned to Profitability: The percentage of community banks that are profitable has increased every year since 2009. Over the first half of 2015, almost 95% of the nation’s 5,880 community banks showed a profit. Return on Equity is Up: Overall profit (Return on Equity) at community banks has also increased every single year since 2009, reaching a healthy 8.9% so far in 2015.”
In recent months there have been calls to roll back regulation of large regional banks – institutions that hold over $50 billion in assets but are not among the eight U.S. mega-banks with a global footprint. In response to unfounded claims about the treatment of large regional banks under the Dodd-Frank Act, AFR has sent a briefing paper to congressional staff as well as the press.