Category Archives: Letters and Statements

Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Opposition to the CFTC’s Proposed Rulemaking and its Dangerous Precedent

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Consumer Federation of America, Food & Water Watch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Public Citizen sent a letter sharing their grave concerns with the justification and potentially calamitous precedent contained in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) proposed rulemaking for the Investment of Customer Funds by Futures Commission Merchants and Derivatives Clearing Organizations. This proposal would expand the list of permitted investments for customer funds to include foreign debt which could put customers at undue financial risk — avoiding such risk was the rationale for prohibiting these transactions in 2011 after the MF Global meltdown.

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Letter to Regulators: Strong Basel Capital Standards Support Growth

The bank lobby is spending vast lobbying dollars to cloak themselves in the mantle of preserving access to credit. 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.

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News Release: Action Need to Curb Private Equity Gambling with Life Insurance

The private equity push into the life insurance business demands a robust state and federal policy response to curb the emerging risks created when a notoriously predatory industry seeks control of the vast quantities of money generated by premium-paying policyholders, according to a new report from Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.

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Letters and Statements: OMB Should Approve Climate Data Call to Equip FIO and Other Financial Regulators with Information on How Climate Change is Affecting Homeowners Insurance Coverage

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for its approval, without delay, of the Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) final proposed “Climate-Related Financial Risk Data Collection for U.S. Homeowners Multi-Peril Underwriting

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CFPB

News Release: As Supreme Court Considers Argument to Defang the Watchdog, a New Poll Shows Wide, Bipartisan Support for CFPB

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Following oral arguments made before the U.S. Supreme Court on the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a new poll – commissioned by the Center for Responsible Lending and Americans for Financial Reform and released today – shows overwhelming support from Republican, Democratic, and independent voters for the CFPB’s mission and for the Bureau to establish several new consumer protections.

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News Release: Antitrust Agencies Must Boost Scrutiny of Private Equity Buyouts

New merger guidelines should confront the powerful and often insidious role played by Wall Street private equity in fostering monopolization across the American economy, according to a letter submitted by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. The letter, sent to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, outlines concrete steps that authorities can take to combat the anti-competitive influence that private equity buyouts have had on industries as diverse as health care, retailing, fast food, and automotive services.

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Media Conversation with Legal Experts to Preview Upcoming CFPB v. CFSA, at Supreme Court

Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 2 pm ET, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), the Constitutional Accountability Center, and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) will host a press call to preview one of the most important cases coming before the Supreme Court this term: CFPB v CFSA, a constitutional challenge to the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Sign up for the call at this link.

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Blog Post: AFR Applauds Rep. Pressley’s Efforts to Seek Accountability from Banks on their Racial Equity Pledges While Opponents Seek to Undermine Corporate Accountability Tools

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Representative Ayanna Pressley sent a letter to the CEOs of the five largest banks in the U.S. — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Citigroup — calling for a financial audit report detailing the status of the racial equity pledges they made in response to the summer 2020 uprisings following the murder of George Floyd.  The pledges ranged from $116 million committed by U.S. Bank to $30 billion committed by JPMorgan Chase.

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