Financial Reform News Archives - Page 6 of 122 - Americans for Financial Reform

In The News: It’s Time for Congress to Do Something About the Economic Mess that Private Equity Giants Have Created (Business Insider)

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz: “[A] recent study by groups including Americans for Financial Reform found that private-equity bankruptcies in the retail industry alone cost 600,000 jobs. One of those laid off, Giovanna De La Rosa, told of her experiences in this publication. The best outcome would be fewer bankruptcies, but when they happen, the welfare of workers needs to be at the top of the list, not at the bottom.”

Event: Convening on Fund Regulation

AFR held a day-long convening of experts to discuss emerging issues in the SEC regulation of registered investment companies (mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds that are registered under the 1940 Act).

In The News: Want To Make Payday Loans In States Where It’s Outlawed? Rent A Bank! (Talking Points Memo)

FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams “is doing the bidding of loan sharks who have a decades-long history of trying to get around state consumer protection rules,” Americans for Financial Reform spokesperson Carter Dougherty observed. “And now a federal regulator is helping them do it.”

News Release: AFR Cheers Introduction of Legislation Eliminating Opportunity Zone Tax Giveaway

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced groundbreaking and essential legislation to repeal the deeply flawed Opportunity Zone tax break passed as part of the 2017 tax cut legislation. In addition to the basic problems with this tax break for the wealthy, multiple media exposés have already found that the rules have been bent to include parcels that benefitted high-rolling real estate investors, including those with ties to the Trump administration.

In The News: Ocasio-Cortez Explains Everything Wrong with Private Equity in Less Than a Minute (GQ)

“I wasn’t sent here to safeguard and protect profit,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video from the hearing circulated by Americans for Financial Reform, “I was sent here to safeguard and protect people.”

In The News: Once Mulvaney’s chief of staff, payday lobbyist enjoys frequent access to his old boss (The Washington Post)

“This lobbyist is about the purest walking-and-talking evidence you could imagine of why money matters in Washington,” Linda Jun, senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform

News Release: New Poll Shows Very Broad Support for Action to Curb Private Equity Abuses

The survey found that voters across party lines both disapprove of common approaches of private equity firms in taking over and running existing businesses. They also approve of measures to increase accountability, close loopholes, and protect workers, investors and the viability of target firms.

AFR Polling Memo: New Survey Shows Bipartisan Skepticism of Private Equity Tactics, Support for Reform

Voters support continued reform of Wall Street, and that conviction extends to the private equity industry, according to a new poll by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting. Majorities of Democrats, independents, and Republicans, oppose the predatory tactics of private equity industry, and support legislative proposals aimed at correcting its abuses.

Letter to Congress: Letter in Support of the Small Business Lending Fairness Act

AFR and partners sent a letter in support of the Small Business Lending Fairness Act, which protects small businesses from predatory lenders by ensuring their ability to defend their businesses in the justice system by codifying the ban on confessions of judgments in consumer and small business loans.

This Halloween, we’re fighting the Zombie Debt Trap

Halloween is a fun time of year where we allow ourselves to be “scared” by haunted houses, ghosts and zombies. But there’s nothing fun about Zombie Debt — which is time-barred debt that is past the legal limit for which it can be collected. The