“Repeat a preposterous story often enough, and maybe someday you’ll get a few people to believe it. That could be the theory behind the campaign to depict the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as an NSA-style spy agency and a threat to liberty.”
“We support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) acquisition and analysis of commercial databases to help it ensure the public is fairly treated by the financial marketplace.
As leaders of consumer and privacy organizations, we agree that the CFPB needs to use the wide range of data available to financial institutions and services in order to identify best practices and necessary safeguards.”
“Forced arbitration clauses deny American consumers and workers of the right to hold corporations accountable. Instead of going to court, these clauses force consumer claims into private arbitration that favors the corporation. Corporations write the arbitration rules, even choosing the arbitration firm and the location for the proceeding. Forced arbitration is thus a parallel system of dispute resolution created by and for corporations and explicitly designed to protect their interests above all else.”
Ten euro-zone countries, including Germany and France, outlined the key points of their broad consensus on a harmonized transaction tax… ‘We are happy to see Europe moving forward on this critical financial reform and urge U.S. policymakers to follow suit,’ said Lisa Donner, Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform. “
Today, CREDO Action, Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen, USAction and USPIRG delivered petitions in which more than 200,000 Americans told Congress not to let the budget process be used as a vehicle for backdoor financial deregulation.
“We welcome the news… that 1,312 former students of Heald College – part of predatory for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. – will finally see the debt cancellation they have long been promised. But we remain gravely concerned by the Department’s unjustifiably narrow approach to debt cancellation, which if it continues unchanged may leave hundreds of thousands of students burdened with debts foisted on them by deceptive and abusive practices.”
“In late November, a bipartisan group of members from Florida’s congressional delegation filed a bill in the House of Representatives that would exempt the state’s payday loan industry from national rules aimed at ending abusive low-dollar lending. The bill would delay implementation of any rule for two years after it was issued and then exempt not only Florida but also other states that adopt Florida’s sham regulatory model.”
Congress must resist temptation to give in to powerful corporate lobbyists that seek to use the country’s budget process to eliminate a much-anticipated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rulemaking that would ensure consumers have access to court when cheated or ripped off, consumer advocacy groups said today. A group of industry representatives that includes the American Bankers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent letters to members of Congress this week encouraging them to add a harmful rider to the contentious spending bills that would disregard the CFPB’s multi-year, data-driven study and analysis on the use of forced arbitration clauses in the fine print of financial contracts.
“Yesterday the Federal Reserve issued its final rule on emergency lending. In response to bipartisan criticism of the 2013 proposal from, among others, Senators Elizabeth Warren and David Vitter, Representative Jeb Hensarling, and Americans for Financial Reform, the Federal Reserve has significantly modified its initial proposal.”
The House of Representatives passed two ill-advised financial deregulation bills on November 18th. Both are giveaways to some of the country’s biggest banks. Both, if they ever became law, would mark a dangerous retreat from the financial reforms put in place after the financial crisis.