Chicago leaders and national organizations joined together to deliver a petition in which over 80,000 Americans asked the SEC to investigate the toxic swap deals squeezing cities and states across the country.
“Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and many members of our coalition and allies have long pressed for significant changes to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) sales of distressed mortgages so that the program better serves homeowners and communities, and we welcome yesterday’s announcement of a number of promising reforms. “
“Today, Senators Mark Warner and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Congressman Elijah Cummings have introduced an important new piece of legislation that takes a comprehensive approach to addressing failures in oversight of the $500 trillion global derivatives market, and would go far to protect the public against the risks of another disastrous meltdown in critical financial markets.”
“If these measures became law, long and painful experience suggests they would cause capital to move from sound and regulated investments into dangerous and unregulated investments. The net effect would be to weaken regulatory oversight, reduce transparency, and generally undermine the regulatory framework that helped make America’s financial markets the deepest, most vibrant markets in the world.”
“Speaker Ryan’s plan to ‘Grow the Economy’ would roll back consumer protections affecting everything from subprime mortgages to payday loans, empower Wall Street lawyers to overturn financial regulatory rules in dozens of new ways, and eliminate post-crisis regulatory powers to control risks at the giant ‘too big to fail’ institutions that dominate Wall Street.”
“For years, advocates have urged the Department of Education to relieve the staggering debt of students who attended for-profit colleges like Corinthian which broke the law. Today, the Department released a forward-looking proposal outlining how students who were victims of illegal acts by their school may pursue a ‘borrower defense to repayment,’ or cancellation of the debt on their federal student loans. We look forward to working with the Department to improve the final proposal so that all students victimized by unlawful and deceptive conduct receive every penny of relief they deserve.”
“The House Appropriations Committee has approved a funding bill packed with riders that would roll back financial reform and undermine consumer protection. These ideological policy provisions have no business being added to such a measure. “
“[T]his plan doesn’t get tough on banks; it gets tough on the regulators policing them. It would dramatically weaken their ability to do their jobs, and make it correspondingly easier for Wall Street banks, shadow banks, and lending companies to profit by ripping off consumers and engaging in reckless and dangerous short term speculation, rather than by providing loans, capital, and financial services on fair and transparent terms.”
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has come out with a proposal for the first federal regulation of small-dollar consumer loans. This rulemaking could help millions of people and be a breakthrough in the struggle to end the abuses of triple-digit-interest, debt-trap lenders. To realize that potential, however, the CFPB will have to address what appear to be a number of weaknesses in this iteration.”
“Consumer, faith and civil rights leaders urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take advantage of the historic opportunity presented by their new rule, proposed earlier today, and strengthen the rule, in order to rein in the worst abuses of payday and car title lending.”