“Regulators need to catch up to the reality that the growth and concentration of the asset management industry has fundamentally reshaped how public companies — including listed banks — make decisions,” said Natalia Renta, a senior policy counsel at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
The climate threat is growing. So is the cost of protecting our homes from its damage. Two weeks ago, Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified in Florida, demonstrating the terrifying magnitude that climate change-fueled extreme weather events can reach. Across the country, the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires, hurricanes, and even thunderstorms will require a new approach to insuring homes and communities.
The just-filed Department of Justice lawsuit against Visa marks a necessary, but not the only, step needed to challenge the anticompetitive practices by the credit card and payment processing company that penalize consumers and restrains robust competition.
Natalia Renta, senior policy counsel, Americans for Financial Reform: “Taxes are a very big issue. The Trump tax cuts were a significant giveaway to big corporations and billionaires and Wall Street. We’re standing very close to a tax fight in 2025 and we’ll be having a big fight about what type of country we want to live in and whether corps and wall street should pay their fair share or whether public servants and teachers should pay a higher tax rate.”
The lone DeFi sceptic on the witness panel, Mark Allen Hays — a senior policy analyst with consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform — agreed that security issues plague DeFi projects. But “the problem goes deeper,” he said, adding that many hacks are inside jobs set up by the founders themselves. These could be addressed by existing rules under US securities regulation, he said, which demands disclosures from regulated entities.
Dimon’s tactic was to argue that inflation—Powell’s foremost worry during the past three years—would get worse if the rule took effect, because banks would have to raise the cost of borrowing to pay for the increase in capital reserves. Mortgages and small-business loans would be smaller. Pensions and college funds would produce lower returns. The price of a soda would increase. But as the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform noted in a comment on the rule, “Banks could very easily raise their current capital levels by simply retaining more earnings, which are plentiful right now, instead of buying back shares or paying dividends.”
“This is an example of corporate monopoly power. They exert a certain price — really, any price that they want — and the parents are at the corporations’ mercy to pay that price,” said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, a pro-consumer advocacy group. “They have no choices.”
Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel for the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, said communities of color often have the highest medical debt rates for many reasons. “Black and Latine families are more likely to have jobs without access to health insurance, and so that would drive up medical debt,” Zinner explained. “There’s also been disparate health treatments for these communities.”
“Despite the industry’s rhetoric around this, the shift in position from policymakers in Congress and other parts of Washington is not based on the substance of the industry’s policy arguments,” said Mark Hays, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit advocating for financial reform, and Demand Progress, a nonprofit progressive advocacy group. “The industry likes to say that this is true proof that there’s a so-called crypto voter, that crypto is a major election outcome or a major election issue. But I just feel like it’s sort of the same old pay-to-play Washington politics,” Hays added.
More opposition came from Patrick Woodall, managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit coalition consisting of more than 200 consumer, civil rights, labor, business and investor organizations. “It would be irresponsible for the regulators to approve this merger after Capital One has repeatedly broken its promises made to secure previous mergers,” Woodall said. “It shut down two-thirds of its branches after promising to maintain its geographic footprint. It stopped making home purchase and home improvement mortgages after promising to maintain service levels.”