“It’s very incompatible with health care, especially today with movements toward improving quality care in health care, increasing the coordination among different types of health care providers, being very focused on patients and patient needs,” said Bob Seifert, senior fellow with Americans for Financial Reform.
“The private-funds industry is trying to use its money and resources and a friendly court in order to push back on rule-making. That’s very simply what’s going on here,” said Andrew Park, senior policy analyst with Americans for Financial Reform, which supports the new SEC rules.
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.”
Americans for Financial Reform flags that it now means all the banking agencies have majorities to move ahead with an unfinished rule from the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to address executives’ incentive-based compensation.
“The SEC must stand behind the need to have basic transparency around stock buybacks,” Natalia Renta, senior policy counsel for corporate governance and power at the group, said in a statement.
ESG advocacy — Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Take On Wall Street are launching esgexplainer.org. They say it’s an attempt at “educating Americans about responsible investing” and “dispelling myths” about ESG.
“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.
“Many risks in the nonbank sector, from insurance to private equity to hedge funds to asset management, are becoming increasingly serious and in need of closer attention,” said Alexa Philo, senior banking and systemic risk analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
The Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform said Thursday that after analyzing the California law and state records, they believe that 75% of Fortune 1000 companies will have to make emissions disclosures once California’s requirements take effect later this decade.
Alexa Philo of Americans for Financial Reform told the House Financial Services Committee last month that the 2008 crisis had devastating impacts on the wealth of people and communities of color. Foreclosures on subprime loans and falling home prices wiped out many Black and Latinx owners’ home equity, which was a large part of their net worth, she said.