Cryptocurrency promises a high-tech opportunity to make buckets of money, but like most get-rich-quick schemes, rip-offs are ubiquitous. The crypto industry is rife with scams, hustles akin to stock swindles, cyberbreaches, and other crimes that can easily separate investors and consumers from their money.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) recent enforcement action against Ejudicate, a forced arbitration platform, highlights the urgent need to restrain a practice that hurts millions of consumers. The agency found Ejudicate had misled student borrowers about its neutrality in arbitration and illegally started sham forced arbitrations against those borrowers.
Since fall 2023, AFREF and partners have been part of an ongoing Campaign for Lower Home Energy Costs. The goal is for The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to require new homes with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be built to
Researchers at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Global Energy Monitor and Private Equity Stakeholder Project assessed the holdings of 21 private equity firms, overseeing a combined $6tn in assets under management.
The 2024 Private Equity Climate Risks Scorecard studied 21 private equity firms that manage $6 trillion worth of companies, and found that two-thirds of the energy companies in their portfolios are invested in fossil fuels, using hundreds of millions of dollars from pension funds. Their gigaton of carbon emissions is over three times as much as from the energy used to power all the homes in America and exceeds those of the global aviation industry.
Problems are brewing in a scheme that is bigger than the Australian economy and almost completely without federal oversight. It is called private credit — large scale lending, but not by banks — and has surged from less than $300 billion in loans in 2013 to over $2.1 trillion globally today. This unregulated market has become yet another tool for the private equity industry to pursue leveraged buyouts and leaves target companies on the hook to repay the new mountains of debt. If this large pool of unregulated loans go sour, the distress could spread into the broader financial system, including traditional banks, and pose systemic risk to the financial system.
The bills coerce financial actors to ignore critical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in investment decisions. This approach can only benefit corporate boards and fossil fuel interests at the expense of workers, investors, and long-term sustainability.
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Powell, you should recuse yourself from the consideration of the Basel III Endgame regulatory capital rule to preserve the integrity of Federal Reserve regulatory decision-making and avoid the appearance of impropriety that would undermine public perception of the central bank’s independence and impartiality. Meeting with big bank CEOs in secret creates the appearance that powerful regulated entities cannot merely influence rulemaking during the public notice and comment period and through their policy arguments, but that they can meet off the record and set regulatory red lines which federal authorities will not cross.
As the focus on the American voter intensifies with the coming election, a new poll released today shows voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), financial regulation generally, and a variety of specific CFPB actions, including efforts to limit credit card late fees, reduce overdraft charges, and prohibit medical debt from appearing on credit reports.
AFREF joined Public Citizen and Sierra Club in a letter to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision responding to its Discussion Paper, The role of climate scenario analysis in strengthening the management and supervision of climate related financial risks. An excerpt from the letter reads: