[Download PDF] July 24, 2012 The Honorable Jeff Merkley United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Merkley: We, the undersigned consumer and community organizations, write to support your legislation to protect consumers from high-risk lending on the internet and offline. The Stopping Abuse and
Watch AFR’s Policy Director, Dr. Marcus Stanley, discuss the regulation of investment advisers at the Cato Institute’s “Should Investment Advisers Be Regulated, If So, How?” on the second panel.
AFR submitted a comment letter opposing the CFTC’s overly broad exemption for derivatives traded between bank affiliates.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi sees the potential for more Jefferson County-style disasters in H.R. 2827, a “compromise” that sharply reduces the ethical responsibilities of those who sell complex financial products to municipalities.
For those who have forgotten (or never fully understood) the tawdry details of the housing bubble and foreclosure epidemic, the Opportunity Agenda breaks it all down in “American Banksters.” This three-minute video aims to inspire public activism and help bring pressure upon the presidential candidates
AFR, The Leadership Conference, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, U.S. PIRG, Public Citizen, and Consumer Federation of America. While this legislation is an improvement on earlier versions of the bill, it still represents a significant weakening of taxpayer protections created by the Dodd-Frank Act to prevent fraud, abuse, and deception in Wall Street financial dealings with municipalities.
LEHMAN ANNIVERSARY STATEMENT: HAVE THEY NO SHAME? That’s a question that Americans should be asking about the Wall Street lobbyists and their friends in Washington who, on this fourth anniversary of the event that triggered the economic meltdown of 2008-09, are mounting an aggressive new
Imagine a world where banks can appeal to the highest office in the land for help if some pesky financial regulator tries to tell them what to do… In fact, there is a bill slouching its way through the Senate right now that would give the president of the United States the power to slam the brakes on new regulations that banks find insufficiently lenient…
A Senate committee may be preparing to approve a bill to impose White House cost-benefit review on a group of formerly independent regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
AFR submitted a comment letter to the CFPB on their proposed rules implementing Dodd-Frank changes regarding high cost mortgage loans. The letter argues against changing triggers for high cost loans for smaller loans which the statute allows but does not require, and argues that the proposal should be strengthened in various ways, including by making sure that borrowers in revolving lines of credit get the same protections as those in closed end mortgages.