WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the appointment of John Morton as Climate Counselor at the Department. In March, Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform issued a blueprint for using financial regulatory tools in response to the climate crisis: Climate
While it’s encouraging to see the Department act to protect over one million defaulted borrowers from seized tax refunds and wage garnishment, they must not leave behind the 5.5 million commercial FFEL borrowers who aren’t in default. An estimated 9 million borrowers total have been left out of the federal student loan suspension through no fault of their own. There is bipartisan support for ensuring no federal student loan borrowers areunfairly left behind; the Department must use its authority to protect all federal student loan borrowers.
On the one-year anniversary of the CARES Act, AFR calls for more oversight in future COVID recovery legislation along with Public Citizen and POGO, to advance a more equitable recovery.
The Department of Education’s actions today halt harms to borrowers that should never have happened. The Department must act next to affirmatively improve borrowers’ realities. The Trump administration, through executive action, made Total and Permanent Disability discharges automatically available to eligible veterans unless they opted-out. The Biden Administration must similarly act to make TPD discharges automatic for the estimated 400,000 borrowers eligible for relief who have not yet received it.
AFREF joined a sign on letter highlighting critical shareholder rights at stake in the Goldman Sachs Supreme Court Case.
Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman’s ongoing refusal to firmly break with former President Donald Trump in spite of Trump’s role inciting the insurrection exposes investors to unacceptable levels of reputational risk. Schwarzman personally donated $3 million to a PAC supporting Trump’s 2020 campaign, money earned from fees and expenses paid for by your pension fund and the working people whose retirement savings you are responsible for investing.
Today, banking regulators announced that they would not be extending one of the largest elements of pandemic-related regulatory relief, the exemption that allowed banks to remove almost $2 trillion in government securities assets from their balance sheets for the purposes of complying with capital regulations. That was the right thing to do.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MARCH 18, 2021 Contact: Alexis Goldstein, alexis@ourfinancialsecurity.org Statement of Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst, Americans for Financial Reform: It is good to see the Department of Education finally take significant steps to fulfill the promise then-Secretary Arne Duncan made in 2015, that
A South Carolina tire factory owned by a global corporation received a substantial loan from the Small Business Administration for pandemic relief while many genuinely small businesses — especially those owned by people of color and women — were unable to access the program.
On Feb 25, more than 145 organizations from across the United States sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, encouraging her to follow through on her promise to create a robust, well-staffed climate hub at Treasury led by a very senior-level person devoted full-time to climate.