The House majority today chose to give Wall Street banks free reign to charge outrageous overdraft junk fees and to abandon oversight of payment apps run by Big Tech and Elon Musk. Along partisan lines, the House voted to roll back two popular safeguards created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Already passed by the Senate, the measures now go to President Trump to be signed into law.
Christine Chen Zinner at the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform told Checkbook: “Consumers are voters, too.” She encourages “everyday people” to talk to their members of Congress to “elevate this agency into the public consciousness” so that it becomes “a political liability for any member of Congress who thinks it’s okay to continue dismantling the CFPB.”
“It means that people are going to be more vulnerable to an industry that is rife with fraud, abuse, market manipulation and cyber-breaches,” said Patrick Woodall, the managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform, which advocates for stronger financial regulations. “This is an industry that is extremely volatile, where people take big losses, where market manipulation by insiders is very prevalent.”
“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.
As landlords, private equity firms raise rents, impose new fees, skimp on property maintenance and pursue tenants more aggressively in court, the Americans for Financial Reform research noted. “The cumulative effect is a massive transfer of wealth from mainly low- and middle-income renters, who can’t afford the onerous barriers to homeownership, to some of the wealthiest men in America,” it said.
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.
“From the beginning of this republic, even the most humble citizen was entitled to their day in court and a fair hearing. And at no point, until the creation of forced arbitration did someone say, ‘Hey you can have a right to your day in court except when your complaint is about a big corporation,” said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.
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.”