Americans for Financial Reform sent a letter to the House Financial Services Committee opposing bills that undermine shareholders’ ability to make sound financial decisions and hold corporations accountable. In our letter, we provide an overview of the bills noticed during the various ESG hearings and briefly discuss why we oppose them.
Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress sent a letter to Congress today expressing opposition to H.R. 4766, the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2023. Both groups fear the bill as posted creates a regulatory pathway that is too permissive for so-called stablecoins (which are rarely stable) and that would fail to adequately protect consumers and increase the potential risks stablecoins pose to financial markets and systems.
Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress joined other consumer advocacy and public interest organizations in sending a letter to Congress expressing opposition to H.R. 4763, The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, a bill intended to create a market regulatory structure for digital assets.
AFR led 58 organizations in expressing opposition to the anti-ESG policy agenda that seeks to insulate the management of public companies from investor input and accountability and undermine regulations that would equip investors with more information to make better decisions about their investments. It was submitted to the record ahead of six House Financial Services Committee hearings on the topic.
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.
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.”
AFR urged opposition to bill doubling down on the so-called Opportunity Zones program that has brought little to no benefit to communities while further enriching a handful of wealthy tech and Wall Street investors and real estate titans.
AFR led a letter signed by 84 national, state, and local groups ranging from civil rights, consumer protection, labor unions, antitrust, and general public interest groups voicing our collective support for the work and mission of the CFPB. In the letter we highlight the importance of an agency dedicated solely to consumer protection and the work the CFPB has done to make customers whole after harm was done. We again push back on the agenda to limit the agency’s effectiveness by subjecting the agency to annual appropriations, changing its leadership structure to a commission, and the most recent proposal to raise the asset threshold for companies under the CFPB’s supervision to $50 billion from the current $10 bn threshold.
AFR sent a letter to members of Congress opposing several capital markets bills that fail to address the inherent lack of information and protections in investing in private offerings while opening the door for more investors to have access to such products by using these proposed pathways to become an “accredited investor”.