Today, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger is set to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee, marking her first oversight hearing since being narrowly confirmed last December. Kraninger will now have to answer to a new chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, and a majority that is demanding answers to why the agency has sided with the industry over consumers.
On Tuesday, Senator Schatz (D-HI) and Representative DeFazio (D-OR) introduced the Wall Street Tax Act, a bill that would tax the sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives at a rate of 10 cents per $100 of Wall Street transactions.
Americans for Financial Reform today released a new compilation of votes in the 115th Congress around financial reform that makes Wall Street’s success in driving its deregulatory agenda starkly visible.
The Senate majority has endorsed a CFPB nominee indistinguishable from Mick Mulvaney, who has done his level best to dismantle from within an agency that once won real results for American families hurt by Wall Street and predatory lenders. Kraninger has no track record at all of consumer protection, or of standing up for vulnerable people.
The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) announced that it has reversed its designation of Prudential Financial, Inc. as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI). The Council, under the leadership of Secretary Mnuchin, has now freed from Federal Reserve consolidated oversight the last of the four previously designated nonbank SIFIs.
“’We commend Senator Reed and his fellow senators for their leadership in protecting service members from abusive predatory lenders. Financial distress continues to be a leading factor that contributes to a lack of combat readiness and family stability for our men and women in uniform,’ said José Alcoff, payday campaign manager at Americans for Financial Reform. ‘Families and service members rely on the Consumer Bureau to ensure lenders comply with the law, and are caught if they target service members with debt trap loans.’”
“The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs meets today to conduct hearings on a set of bills ostensibly designed to increase access to capital. Several of these bills are part of a dangerous agenda to rollback securities markets regulations. The deregulation of private capital markets contemplated in these bills would disproportionately affect small, retail investors vis-à-vis large investors and would undermine the effective regulations and investor protections that are fundamental principles of stable and enlarging U.S. public capital markets. “
A new nationwide survey of likely 2018 voters in key battleground congressional districts reveals overwhelming, broad-based, and intense support for curbing big banks’ influence in Washington, and holding financial companies accountable for discrimination.
A new poll reveals overwhelming public support for government action to stop lenders from discriminating against borrowers of color. Lawmakers who voted to roll back the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s effort to guard against discrimination in auto lending were steering against the will of their own voters.
Statement from Marcus Stanley, policy director, Americans for Financial Reform: “The proposal we heard described today does not come close to measuring up. The standard of conduct the agency has articulated appears ambiguous at best. It doesn’t simply ban the sales quotas and other compensation practices that lead brokers to put their clients into high-fee, lower-yielding investments.”