At a town hall hosted by United for Respect and Americans for Financial Reform, workers and leaders across industries came out strongly in support of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. The event focused on the devastating impact of private equity firms on the quality and quantity of jobs across industries.
AFREF joined a letter urging Ambassador Susan Rice to place a high priority on ensuring data-driven technologies, including algorithmic decision making, artificial intelligence, and machine learning increasingly used to make important decisions about people’s lives, protect civil rights, prevent unlawful discrimination, and advance equal opportunity.
“Whether it is preserving favored tax loopholes or forestalling more comprehensive reform, private fund executives spend on politics for the purpose of getting richer at the expense of everyone else,” Ricardo Valadez, private equity campaign manager at AFR, said.
Wall Street private equity and hedge funds pumped at least $627 million into the political process – campaign contributions and lobbying – during the 2019-2020 election cycle. The sum, amounting to about $858,000 each day, reflects the meteoric rise in the size and scope of the private funds industry, which has come to control vast swaths of the American economy over the last decade.
AFREF joined a letter to FHFA in response to the enterprise equitable housing finance plans request for input.
Many organizations have come out in support of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, the first comprehensive reform of the predatory private equity industry. This legislation was introduced in Congress today.
“I would say that there is a history of dumping on the postal service, and Congress certainly hasn’t helped the situation over the years,” said Porter McConnell, campaign director of Take on Wall Street, co-founder of the Save the Post Office coalition. “That said, stepping into this history in Louis DeJoy, uniquely ill-suited to the moment.”
AFR joined the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and many other organizations “to urge [President Biden] to immediately pause the removal of Haitians to Haiti and uphold basic due process and human rights for Haitians seeking asylum at the U.S. border. We also call upon your administration to investigate the treatment of migrants and conditions near the Del Rio, Texas port of entry.”
Take on Wall Street/AFR, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, and United for Respect hosted a briefing for Hill staffers on September 23, 2021, to explain why Wall Street needs an excise tax on stock buybacks and why now is the
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and the Communication Workers of America sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission urging that the Commission close critical loopholes and exemptions that currently exist in its Forms 13-F and 13-D reports that have been intentionally exploited by hedge fund investors. By doing so, hedge funds can no longer utilize derivatives and other complex financial instruments to build large positions and ambush the management of companies.