In a letter to Director Richard Cordray, 58 lawmakers urge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to use its Dodd-Frank authority to prohibit financial services companies from forcing consumers to resolve disputes in private arbitration instead of court. The CFPB should heed their call, four public-interest groups, including AFR, said today.
“Yesterday, more than 78,000 individuals as well as 51 national and local consumer, labor, and community groups sent a clear message – exressed in a set of petitions and letters to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – that the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) has a duty to cancel the federal student loans of all borrowers harmed by Corinthian Colleges without requiring each one to prove Corinthian’s fraud. “
“The CFPB should use the authority that it has to make sure that borrowers are treated fairly, and that they get the information they need to take advantage of any repayment plans available to them. This means that abusive, profit-increasing practices that are banned in other consumer debt industries, but are still used by companies that collect payments on private student loans, must be curbed.”
“Senator Shelby’s 216-page draft legislation makes sweeping changes that would significantly weaken key financial reforms passed in direct response to the events of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. It puts the wish list of the financial sector above protecting the stability of the US economy, and the safety of mortgage markets and of homebuyers. “
“Late last night, a bipartisan group of Armed Services Committee members, led by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), a veteran, upheld the Defense Department’s efforts to close loopholes and add new protections to the Military Lending Act (MLA), a 2007 law that was meant to declare servicemembers off-limits to payday and other debt-trap consumer loans.”
With a public review process just getting underway, CREDO Action, MoveOn.org, AFR and Public Citizen have submitted petitions in which more than 225,000 people tell lawmakers and regulators to uphold the promise of strong action to protect Americans against self-serving retirement advice.
“The expansion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) under the TPP poses a significant threat to financial regulations being put in place in the US and around the world in the wake of the financial crisis. It could allow financial companies to challenge new rules put in place to protect consumers and investors or ensure the stability of the financial system, and force U.S. taxpayers to pay for any losses in profits claimed due to these rules.”
“Americans for Financial Reform has steadily advocated for many of the policy ideas outlined in her speech, and applauds this heightened push to advance them… Even more important, we support Senator Warren’s call for a renewed effort both to carry out the Dodd-Frank reforms and, based on the lessons of the implementation process up to now, move beyond ‘technocratic’ measures that can be easy for the biggest banks to outmaneuver toward a more ‘structural’ approach and the promise of a fundamentally simpler, safer and fairer financial system.”
“Members of the SaveOurRetirement.org coalition and a diverse collection of public interest groups, civil rights leaders, labor unions, professional organizations and others today commended the public release of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposed rule to protect Americans from conflicts of interest when brokers and other financial advisers give retirement investment advice.”
“First, for a loan to be fair, the borrower must have the ability to repay… Second, the Bureau has recognized that this crucial principle… must apply to a sufficiently broad range of small-dollar loans, and not just to a narrowly defined set of payday or car- title loans. Otherwise, abusive lenders will do what they have done in many of the states that have tried to crack down on such abuses: find ways to evade the rules without giving up their basic debt-trap approach.”