Category Archives: Letters and Statements

student graduates thowing their caps into the air

Sign-on Letter: Over 235 Orgs Call on President-Elect Biden to Cancel Federal Student Debt on Day One using Executive Action

239 organizations signed a letter to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris, calling on them to use executive authority to cancel federal student debt on day one of their administration. The letter was led by Americans for Financial Reform, the Center for Responsible Lending, Demos, the National Consumer Law Center, and Student Borrower Protection Center.

Event: Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Panel

On Oct. 19, AFR Executive Director Lisa Donner participated in a virtual conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Entitled “Empowering the public to assess large bank resiliency, the conference brought together leading experts to bank transparency to discuss how to maintain and improve transparency of the conditions of major banks.

In The News: 10 Years After Financial Reforms, Public Wants More Regulation (Rising Up With Sonali)

It has been more than ten years since the Obama Administration signed into law the Dodd Frank Act, a set of modest financial regulations that were meant to address the causes of the Great Recession. Since then many of the regulations have been weakened and whittled down. But a new poll finds strong public support, across the political spectrum for Wall Street to be held to account.

Testimony: License to Bank – Examining the Legal Framework Governing Who Can Lend and Process Payments in the Fintech Age

What industry calls “innovation” is often easily mapped to a longstanding financial service and therefore the existing laws should apply. At the same time, certain tools and certain forms of partnerships should have no place in our economy whatsoever. Treating innovation as an unqualified good leads regulators to ignore both considerations of equity and long-term, sustainable innovation. Give the interface between powerful corporations, complex products, and the public, precaution should be the norm, as it is in food and drug regulation.

News Release: Durable Support for Tough Wall Street Rules and Mission of CFPB

Ten years after Congress passed a major reform of Wall Street in response to the financial crisis voters overwhelmingly support more and tougher regulation of finance and they strongly approve of the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And, as the decade after the 2008 crisis unfolded to reveal continuing abuses by Wall Street, and the growth of predatory financial practices, notably by private equity, the public’s appetite for additional reform has strengthened. And the results underscore the need for rigorous oversight to ensure consumers aren’t victimized by unscrupulous lending practices.

Polling Memo: Voters Support Strong Consumer Financial Protections and Tough Regulation of Wall Street

Voters across all political parties are broadly and intensely supportive of strong consumer financial protections and of tough regulation of the financial services industry. This sentiment extends not only to keeping existing measures in place but expanding on what Congress did a decade ago, and has proved durable throughout the period since the 2008 financial crisis, through the weak recovery that followed and into the searing recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.