The new staff purges at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will allow Wall Street, predatory lenders, and many other financial companies to rip off their own customers without any recourse to an agency that has won $21 billion in relief for consumers in its 14-year history.
Today, a comprehensive new joint report published by Americans for Tax Fairness, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund exposes the often destructive impacts of the private equity (PE) industry on consumers, workers, and communities. In addition to providing several first-person stories of the havoc wrought by private-equity investment, the report details how the tax code makes the industry even more profitable and wealthy PE owners even richer. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) recently introduced legislation that would close one of the industry’s most egregious tax loopholes.
The only federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers and going after financial fraud by big banks, credit bureaus, and shady lenders, has been all but shut down, creating a new challenge for consumers who want to manage their finances well but now lack the services of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The California State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara approved a $1 billion bailout of the state’s FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan to help cover over 3,400 claims it has received due to the devastating Los Angeles fires. The FAIR plan provides insurance to consumers who were dropped by their private insurers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Acting Chair Mark Uyeda has requested that the 8th Circuit halt litigation of the agency’s climate transparency rule in light of his and Commissioner Peirce’s opposition to the rule and President Trump’s anti-regulatory order.
The shutdown of all supervision and oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will allow all manner of financial companies, from Wall Street megabanks to payday lenders to financial technology firms to credit bureaus to rip people off and mistreat their customers at will.
Today, the Republican House majority revealed draft legislation to stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) overdraft rule from going into effect on October 1, 2025. The CFPB’s overdraft fee rule will reduce big bank overdraft fees from $35 per transaction down to $5, a move that will save the 23 million households in the United States that pay overdraft fees $5 billion annually, or $225 per family.
The Republican-led House Financial Services Committee is devoting its first hearing of the new Congress to destroying a CFPB final rule that would slash a particularly abusive big-bank junk fee – overdraft charges – from $35 down to $5, which would save people $5 billion each year, or $225 per household.
The Private Equity Climate Risks project unveiled an update to its public database of the energy holdings of 20 of the world’s largest private equity firms, the Private Equity Energy Tracker, bringing into focus the latest state of private equity investments in the energy sector.
Dozens of consumer protection, community development, environmental, climate, and racial justice advocates have joined together to form the Equitable & Just Insurance Initiative, a coalition that aims to develop solutions that can guide community leaders and policy advocates working to address the climate-driven insurance crisis.