Category Archives: Financial Reform News

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New AFR Report: Where They Stand on Financial Reform

“Surveys show high levels of voter support for tougher rules; apart from the Senate’s confirmation of two notable regulatory officials, however, most of last year’s congressional votes on such matters were over efforts to reverse or water down reforms already enacted into law. And while some legislators resisted those efforts and continued to press for more industry accountability, many others – particularly in the House – threw their weight behind a series of proposals to weaken existing rules or to undermine the agencies charged with implementing them.”

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Who Do They Represent, Anyway?

The House of Representatives plans to vote this week on the so-called “Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Improvement Act” (HR 3193). This bill is a gift to the worst elements of Wall Street and the financial industry, whose tricks and traps cost American families tens of billions of dollars a year. If enacted into law, HR 3193 would invite a resurgence of the abusive and deceptive lending that was one of the leading causes of the financial crisis that nearly capsized the U.S. economy five-and-a-half years ago.

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CFPB Study Highlights Some of the Many Problems With Forced Arbitration

“In arbitration, there is no publicly accountable judge, jury, or right to an appeal. The arbitrators do not have to follow the facts or the law, and there is no public review of decisions to ensure the arbitrator got it right. Moreover, contracts typically name the arbitration firm that must be used—the one preferred by the company.”

An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for All of Us

“We should not accept a financial system that allows the biggest banks to emerge from a crisis in record-setting shape while working Americans continue to struggle.” – Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking at the launch event for a new AFR/Roosevelt Institute report on the state of financial reform.

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“Opening Wall Street’s Black Box” – Pathways to Improved Financial Transparency

After the 2008 crisis, it became clear that regulators and many sophisticated market participants had been kept in the dark about major risks and exposures in our financial system. On October 11, 2013, AFR and Georgetown Law Center co-hosted this half-day conference on the progress made – and the work that remains to be done – toward meaningful transparency on Wall Street.

Really Small Wall Street Tax Could Make a Really Big Difference

Congress will soon be back from recess – and back to gnashing its teeth over the budget and the various important things that, too many in that branch of government now contend, our country can no longer afford to do. They could expand their sense of the possible by considering a source of revenue they have so far largely ignored – a small tax on sales of stocks, bonds, and complex financial instruments.

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AFR in the News: Taking the Measure of Dodd-Frank Three Years Later

“The progress of the CFPB has been the most impressive” result, said AFR Policy Director Marcus Stanley. “In 2009, very few people would have predicted that a few years later there would be a fully operational and independent consumer financial protection bureau.”

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AFR in the News: Key Senate Vote for Cordray Confirmation

By 71 to 29, the Senate has agreed to end debate and allow a vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That vote “will remove the threat of legal challenges to the bureau’s rules and enforcement actions,” Bloomberg reports.