Category Archives: Financial Reform News

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AFR in the News: Kicking Dodd-Frank in the Teeth (NY Times)

“We’re going to see repeated attempts to go in with seemingly technical changes that intimidate regulators and keep them from putting teeth in regulations,” predicted Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform… “If we return to the precrisis business as usual, where it’s routine for people to accommodate Wall Street on these technical changes, they’re just going to unravel the postcrisis regulation piece by piece.”

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AFR in the News: Pay-Disclosure Advocates Chafe at SEC Rule Delays (MarketWatch)

Supporters of a rule that would require public companies to disclose the ratio between executive and median employee pay say the Securities and Exchange Commission should move soon to enact the regulation. “It’s one of the simplest, most straightforward Dodd-Frank rules,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform.

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AFR Opposes Weakening CFPB Supervision of Large Banks

AFR sent a letter to House and Senate members asking them to oppose S. 2732, the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Examination and Reporting Threshold Act of 2014.” This legislation would increase from $10 billion to $50 billion the asset threshold for “large banks” subject to supervision by the CFPB, dramatically reducing the number of large banks supervised by the CFPB threatening harm to the hundreds of millions of consumers who are beginning to benefit from effective oversight of these institutions.

Moving Toward a Wall Street Tax

A Capitol Hill briefing with JARED BERNSTEIN, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; former chief economist to the Vice President; SARAH ANDERSON, Global Economy Project Director, Institute for Policy Studies; DAVID HILLMAN, Director of Stamp Out Poverty and Founder of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign (UK); ANDREW HANAUER, Campaigns Director, Jubilee USA Network; HEATHER SLAVKIN CORZO, Director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment; and ROBERT WEISSMAN, President of Public Citizen.

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AFR Joins More than 200 Other Groups in Urging FHFA Director Mel Watt to Reverse Fannie-Freddie Policy on Principal Reduction

Mel Watt is being urged again to end the policy of prohibiting mortgage modifications that reduce the balance of principal. In a joint letter delivered today, more than 200 housing, community, labor, civil rights and consumer groups call on Watt to reverse the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s longstanding ban on principal reduction – a policy put in place by his predecessor.

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AFR in the News: Elizabeth Warren on Predatory Lending to Service Members (MSNBC)

“When these financial predators come after them, I feel ashamed for the rest of us,” Sen. Warren tells former Rep. Patrick Murphy. She goes on to praise the Defense Department’s new Military Lending Act rules, the CFPB’s Office of Servicemember Affairs, and (responding to a comment by Murphy) Americans for Financial Reform. “Yes, they’ve been terrific.”