Alexa Philo and Patrick Woodall of Americans for Financial Reform: “Picture a new megabank with all the advantages and dangers of a too-big-to-fail institution. Now imagine it had the market power to bully merchants through its ownership of a payment network for debit and credit cards. Finally, throw in a track record of gouging its own customers. That’s exactly what we will have if Capital One succeeds in taking over Discover Financial Services.”
Carter Dougherty, the communications director at Americans for Financial Reform (and a former reporter for The Times) … “With executive compensation linked to bank share prices, you realize the incredibly self-interested case that the bank lobby makes against more equity/capital: it lowers banker compensation.”
“There are changes that fiddle at the edges of a problem and there are reforms like this one that will save consumers billions each year by slashing a particularly nasty kind of junk fee,” said Amanda N. Jackson, director of consumer campaigns at Americans for Financial Reform, which has advocated for stronger federal financial regulation.
“Steward is a prime example of private equity’s business model of extracting short-term profits from entities before selling them off,” said Robert Seifert, senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform. “In the case of health care, this can leave critical service providers worse off financially, with more money going to Wall Street and less toward long-term viability, hospital staffing, and patient care,” he added.
“Today’s concentrated markets and behemoth banking organizations are the result of a thirty-year run of mergers and consolidation,” said Patrick Woodall, senior fellow at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “It is time for the banking regulators to stop rubber-stamping these transactions and stand up for consumers, communities, and a more stable financial system by blocking this takeover.”
“It’s very incompatible with health care, especially today with movements toward improving quality care in health care, increasing the coordination among different types of health care providers, being very focused on patients and patient needs,” said Bob Seifert, senior fellow with Americans for Financial Reform.
