“… it’s called climate change because the climate is changing, and much faster than scientists originally anticipated. We cannot merely use past data to predict future climate impacts,” wrote Alex Martin, senior policy analyst at AFR. “We must take a precautionary approach and heed the stern warnings from scientists about our dire current global trajectory. The US will not be spared the effects.”
“Wall Street will face renewed scrutiny from the American public about the privileges it enjoys thanks to a political system that for far too long went along with what the industry wanted, no matter the costs to the rest of us,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.
“Blaming deposit insurance itself, however much the rescue of SVB depositors sticks in the craw, would be precisely the wrong reaction to this year’s crisis. The true injustice of the moment lies not in extending deposit insurance but in the paucity of obligations that bankers face in return,” AFR’s Communication Director, Carter Dougherty wrote.
“We have to think much more deeply as a society about how we view housing and whose interests are worth protecting the most,” [Caroline] Nagy, [senior policy analyst at AFR] said. “Looking at our tax and finance policy and seeing that we’re incentivizing the exact opposite is a very difficult, problematic place to be in.”
“They will say, ‘we have a good control on our risk,’ but you generate these returns somehow — these higher returns,” said Andrew Park, a senior policy analyst at the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. “There is no free lunch on that.”
Alexa Philo, a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, said the Fed could adopt stricter rules on its own, without relying on Congress. “It is long past time to roll back the dangerous deregulation under the last administration to the greatest extent possible, and pay close attention to the largest banks so this crisis does not worsen,” she said.
