Private equity owns over a million U.S. apartment units. Tenants pay a price when corporate landlords buy their buildings. In some cases, private equity buyers have pushed out lower-income tenants – through rent hikes, eviction threats, and more – to flip buildings into high-rent properties to sell for big profits.
Wall Street private equity funds are continuing to snap up homes to pad their expanding portfolio of rental properties. Institutional investors own nearly a quarter million single-family rental homes. Wall Street landlords often hike rents, avoid repairs, gouge tenants with fees, and are more likely to evict tenants.
The financial cycle is a concept developed by economists to understand the reasons why finance-driven growth can be self-defeating. Policymakers need to rebalance our response to recessions and financial crises to prevent any repetition of the experience of 2008-2009, in which benefits flowed to Wall Street, not ordinary Americans.
New members of Congress demonstrated substantially less reliance on money from the financial services industry than incumbents who won re-election in 2018. First-term Democratic members of the House raised, on average, 17 percent of the money for their campaign committees from small donors, compared with 9.4 percent by Democratic incumbents who won re-election.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund published a new report describing the history of the Volcker Rule and the efforts of the financial industry to undermine it. The Volcker Rule is a central element of post-crisis financial regulation that is intended to be a modern
This comprehensive guide details how members of the 115th Congress voted on bills and nominations related to financial reform.
In the first twelve months of the 2017-18 election cycle, Wall Street banks and financial interests have reported spending $719 million to influence decision-making through campaign contributions and lobbying. That total works out to about $2.0 million a day. The financial sector is by far the largest source of campaign contributions in federal elections, and the third largest spender on lobbying
AFR released the document below to provide context on the Congressional testimony of Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision Randy Quarles, and highlight several areas which we believe Congress should question him about. AFR Backgrounder on Quarles Testimony