AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst, Alexa Philo, testified Before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on economic policy.
Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress joined other consumer advocacy and public interest organizations in sending a letter to Congress expressing opposition to a proposed bill intended to create a market regulatory structure for digital assets.
AFR opposes a series of legislative proposals that have recently been approved by House committees, and, in some cases, by the full House of Representatives, and that seek to amend the federal securities laws in ways that would be harmful to investors. Some of the House proposals directly weaken regulatory oversight and threaten investor protection, while others seek to alter policy in a more subtle or incremental fashion.
A 2022 research memo from Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan nonprofit coalition, found that private equity firms are now landlords to at least 1.6 million families across the United States. This figure is likely an underestimate.
Americans for Financial Reform submitted a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee in response to the Committee’s June 13 hearing on digital assets, entitled, “The Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for the Digital Asset Ecosystem.”
Washington, D.C. – The announcement by Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter that the Department of Justice is willing to block bank mergers even after they have been approved by their primary regulators represents a welcome sea change after decades in which government authorities waved through consolidation in this industry.
“Wall Street will face renewed scrutiny from the American public about the privileges it enjoys thanks to a political system that for far too long went along with what the industry wanted, no matter the costs to the rest of us,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.
The Fifth Circuit’s radical and unprecedented decision in the case of CFPB vs. CFSA, if confirmed, would undermine the critical work carried out by the CFPB in protecting consumers and enforcing regulations on Wall Street and predatory lenders, according to an amicus brief filed by consumer advocates.
As the former CEOs of failed banks prepare to testify before Congress, consider the self-serving statements that bank executives, lobbyists and lawmakers uttered to grease passage of banking deregulation legislation in 2018. “SVB, like our mid-sized bank peers, does not present systemic risks,” Greg Becker, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank insisted, about five years before federal authorities declared his bank a systemic risk.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and 12 other signers submitted a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission reiterating the need for the SEC to finalize a strong set of rules to better protect investors in private funds, which include hedge funds and private equity.