Few tax loopholes better exemplify how our rigged economy rewards wealth extraction over real work than the carried interest loophole. The controversial loophole exists to benefit some of the wealthiest people on Wall Street—especially private equity executives—at the expense of workers, communities, and the public.
Public pensions hold trillions of dollars of workers’ capital — wages earned by teachers, firefighters, nurses, and public workers who keep our society running. But this money is under attack.
The Business Roundtable’s most recent diatribe against a modest shareholder check on the power of corporate boards and executives came just in time for Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on proxy advisors — firms that provide research and proxy voting recommendations to shareholders.
Another Musk/Big Tech giveaway occurred this week as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped its case against PayPal for skirting prepaid card rules that apply to gift cards and re-chargeable payment apps.
Let’s be clear: Hal Scott’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—because the Fed has been running a deficit—isn’t just a bad policy recommendation; it’s an intentionally backward argument that advocates harming the very people the financial system has historically exploited.
This week, the Trump administration withdrew a 2022 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) lawsuit against MoneyGram for its persistent failure to comply with consumer protection laws by failing to promptly deliver transfers, resolve disputes, and implement policies to comply with the law. The Trump CFPB’s refusal to hold MoneyGram accountable for its repeated and ongoing unlawful behavior is part of a pattern of willfully ignoring lawbreaking and letting financial scofflaws off the hook.
Healthcare has become a nightmare: rising costs, denied care, and mounting patient debt, all while Wall Street rakes in massive profits. On February 24, 2025, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) and the Health and Political Economy Project (HPEP) hosted a webinar featuring physician and researcher Dr. Victor Roy, economist Lenore Palladino, and longtime physician and healthcare policy expert Dr. Donald Berwick.
Banking has changed a lot since 1977, but CRA regulations have not been meaningfully updated in three decades. In 2023, the banking regulators modernized the old brick and mortar banking rules for the modern era and strengthened CRA performance evaluations. Under new Trump-appointed leadership, regulators are now inexplicably walking away from these improvements.
The #HandsOff demonstrations on April 5 included many different people, organizations, and causes, all united in an effort to stop the Trump administration’s destruction of the federal government and American democracy. Americans for Financial Reform was among the groups that supported the effort, with a particular focus on one subject: “Hands Off Our CFPB.”
In the wake of last weekend’s Tesla Takedown’s day of action at hundreds of dealerships across the country, financial officers on both sides of the political aisle weighed in on how to address Tesla’s tanking share price. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander called for accountability from Elon Musk and Tesla’s board of directors;