“The last time we saw this speculative feeding frenzy was in 2008, when in July, amidst the meltdown in the credit and housing markets, speculators wildly ran up the price of crude oil to over $140 per barrel. Was the steroidal price explosion in 2008 due to increased demand or a significant reduction in supply? Trading volume was nearly 15 times world oil demand that year, according to research compiled by Americans for Financial Reform.”
“Advocates on the left, however, are adamant that the ban remain in place, arguing that it forces banks to put up greater collateral to back up risky bets. ‘It is a form of firewall between swaps dealing and the rest of your operations, requiring separate capitalization,’ says Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform. ‘When you allow banks to do absolutely unlimited derivatives activities, it’s hard to separate banking from speculation.'”
“On Feb. 16, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would exempt newly public companies from holding say-on-pay votes for five years. …Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), a coalition of consumer and investor groups that includes the AFL-CIO, has urged the Senate Banking Committee to reject the emerging company legislation. The coalition criticized the auditor attestation exemption and noted that say-on-pay votes have nothing to do with eliminating barriers to new IPOs.”
“Fed board members and staff members apparently met with JPMorgan Chase 16 times, Bank of America 10 times, Goldman Sachs nine times, Barclays seven times and Morgan Stanley seven times (as depicted in a chart that accompanies the Wall Street Journal article). How many meetings does a single company need on one specific issue? How many would you get? For example, Americans for Financial Reform, an organization that describes itself as ‘fighting for a banking and financial system based on accountability, fairness and security,’ met with senior Federal Reserve officials only three times on the Volcker Rule.”
“The U.S. House Financial Services Committee approved legislation that would let banks keep commodity and equity derivatives in federally-insured units by removing part of the Dodd-Frank Act’s so-called push-out rule. …Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition including the AFL-CIO labor federation as well as other unions and consumer advocacy groups, opposed changes to the push-out rule in a letter before the vote.”
The so-called Volcker Rule has broken the record for attracting the most comment letters submitted on any Dodd-Frank proposal. Regulators have received a whopping 17,000-plus comments on the proposal, a Federal Reserve spokeswoman said. …Behind this deluge is a partnership of two consumer advocacy groups that have been active in pushing back against the banks during the Dodd-Frank rule-writing process. Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform used email lists and social media such as Twitter and Facebook to recruit members and others to submit comments on the Volcker Rule.
