Category Archives: Education Fund

Letters to Congress: Letter in Opposition to H.R. 2799, the Expanding Access to Capital Act

AFREF led a sign-on letter in opposition to H.R. 2799, the Expanding Access to Capital Act of 2024, along with the 10 undersigned organizations. Fundamentally, H.R. 2799 weakens regulation of both the public markets and the private markets, making it a bad deal for investors of all types, and a boon to issuers interested in raising capital with the lowest possible degree of disclosure, compliance, accountability, and overall economic inefficiency.

Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Support of Developing a Financial Inclusion Strategy

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) sent a letter to the Treasury Department outlining principles, scope, and direction for the department’s development of a financial inclusion strategy.  Developing a financial inclusion strategy is long-overdue and a necessary step to understand and begin to address the contributions of inequitable access to financial products and services for disadvantaged communities to the persistent racial economic inequality in the United States.

News Release: Changes to Disclosures Will Increase Visibility in some Private Fund Activities

Washington, D.C. – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) expansions to the information collected by private funds over Form PF and Form CPO will provide both the agencies and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) with greater visibility and early warning signs into portions of the $21 trillion private fund industry. 

SEC Building

Letters to Congress: Urging Action on $5 Trillion Exempt Offerings/Private Markets

Americans for Financial Reform today wrote to the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions urging members to rely on existing authority by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to gain more transparency into the $5 trillion private markets (“exempt offerings” under SEC Rule 144A and Reg D) to address national security concerns.

Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Opposition to the CFTC’s Proposed Rulemaking and its Dangerous Precedent

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Consumer Federation of America, Food & Water Watch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Public Citizen sent a letter sharing their grave concerns with the justification and potentially calamitous precedent contained in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) proposed rulemaking for the Investment of Customer Funds by Futures Commission Merchants and Derivatives Clearing Organizations. This proposal would expand the list of permitted investments for customer funds to include foreign debt which could put customers at undue financial risk — avoiding such risk was the rationale for prohibiting these transactions in 2011 after the MF Global meltdown.