“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.”
“The push for a Wall Street transaction tax continues to gain traction in Washington. In a fresh show of support , a majority of the Democratic members of the House of Representatives voted today for the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s “People’s Budget,” which includes a transaction tax. The 96 votes cast in favor of the CPC budget are 8 more votes than a similar proposal received last year.”
“Republicans in the House of Representatives have come out with a budget proposal that, while vague on many points, is all too specific in its attack on Wall Street regulation, the Dodd-Frank Act, and the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The proposal would tie financial (and other) regulators up in procedural knots… In addition, it would eliminate a key mechanism for the safe unwinding of a big bank in the event of failure; undermine the ability of regulators to detect and curb systemically dangerous practices; and end the independent funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
“There should be no mistaking the intent or inevitable effect if this change were actually made: it would cripple the first and only financial regulator with a mandate to put consumers’ interests first… The result would be a green light for more of the tricks and traps that characterized the banking and lending world for too long, and that the CFPB is working to clean up.”
“For the first time, consumers will be able to learn the details behind complaints against a company filed with the CFPB. In addition to searching by product, company, and complaint category, consumers will be able to discover what the real problem was that motivated someone to complain… Researchers and companies will be able to better analyze marketplace practices that are posing the most difficult problems.”