Category Archives: In the News

In The News: Commentary: Crisis at Steward Health highlights private equity’s threat to healthcare (The Dorchester Reporter)

“Steward is a prime example of private equity’s business model of extracting short-term profits from entities before selling them off,” said Robert Seifert, senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform. “In the case of health care, this can leave critical service providers worse off financially, with more money going to Wall Street and less toward long-term viability, hospital staffing, and patient care,” he added.

In The News: The Capital One-Discover deal raises thorny issues for Washington (American Banker)

“Today’s concentrated markets and behemoth banking organizations are the result of a thirty-year run of mergers and consolidation,” said Patrick Woodall, senior fellow at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “It is time for the banking regulators to stop rubber-stamping these transactions and stand up for consumers, communities, and a more stable financial system by blocking this takeover.”

In The News: Banks Fine-Tune Critiques of US Capital Plan to Sway Fed’s Michael Barr (Bloomberg)

Banks are spending “vast lobbying dollars to cloak themselves in the mantle of preserving access to credit,” [AFR] said. “But the truth that the banks avoid debating is that the overwhelming impact of higher bank capital is — by design — to restrict how risky and how big the more speculative aspects of their business, notably their trading and investment bank operations, can grow.”

In The News: How Banks Keep You Trapped (The American Prospect)

“Banks make it very hard for consumers to choose where they want to go if they’re not happy with services,” Elyse Hicks, a lawyer specializing in consumer policy at the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, told The Lever and The American Prospect.