Consumer advocates decried the Senate Banking Committee’s passage today of a flawed bill – S. 919, the GENIUS Act – that would legitimize a risky class of crypto assets known as stablecoins and embed them more deeply into the banking system.
The Sycamore Partners $10 billion purchase of drugstore chain Walgreens risks disaster for workers and customers, given this private equity firm’s track record. The private equity takeover of retailers has enriched the Wall Street by extracting dividends, stripping out real estate, and charging astronomical fees that has driven many chains into bankruptcy, shuttered thousands of locations, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and left consumers worse off than before.
Senate Republicans voted to give Elon Musk and Big Tech the ability to operate payment apps without any meaningful oversight or accountability, a step that will leave millions vulnerable to financial predators and scammers.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund published a research memo, Private Equity’s Silicon Gold Rush, analyzing private equity’s surging investments in data centers used for artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, and cloud computing.
At the behest of the new Trump-appointed leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has abandoned an enforcement case against megabank Capital One, a step that will cost consumers $2 billion in restitution.
On February 17, 2025, Delaware lawmakers proposed amendments to the state’s corporate law through Senate Bill 21 or the “Billionaires’ Bill” that would enable billionaires like Elon Musk to raid corporate treasuries at the expense of working people like teachers and construction workers counting on their pensions for a secure retirement. This Billionaires’ Bill was drafted by Elon Musk’s lawyers in secret and far outside the usual procedure for formulating changes to the state’s corporate law, which governs around two thirds of the corporations in the S&P 500.
In a webinar hosted by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) and The Horizon Project, leading labor and state officials laid out strategies to protect public pensions from federal attacks and deploy state pension power to grow a strong economy for retirees, workers, and the public.
In a letter sent to Congress today, more than 20 state and national groups raised alarms over two bills — the STABLE Act in the House and the GENIUS Act in the Senate — that attempt to create a new regulatory framework for so-called stablecoins.
This executive order is an unconstitutional power-grab that delegates supreme authority over congressionally-mandated, court-sanctioned statutes and regulatory safeguards to unelected, unnominated, unconfirmed bureaucrats.
The Trump White House unveiled a new executive order that illegally undermines the congressionally-mandated independence of federal agencies that have a statutory obligation to regulate impartially in order to protect the public. A fact sheet that accompanied the executive order singled out the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the stock markets, the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust law and consumer protection statutes, and the Federal Election Commission, which oversees electoral ethics and political spending.