Today, banking regulators announced that they would not be extending one of the largest elements of pandemic-related regulatory relief, the exemption that allowed banks to remove almost $2 trillion in government securities assets from their balance sheets for the purposes of complying with capital regulations. That was the right thing to do.
A South Carolina tire factory owned by a global corporation received a substantial loan from the Small Business Administration for pandemic relief while many genuinely small businesses — especially those owned by people of color and women — were unable to access the program.
AFREF joined several of our civil rights and other partners in opposing the Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping issued on September 22, 2020.
A provision inserted by Sen. Mike Crapo, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, would encourage Trump-appointed regulators, who have already sought to reduce the minimum amounts of their own risk capital that banks have to hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, to go further. Sen. Susan Collins, sponsor of the part of Dodd-Frank in 2010 that Crapo wants to gut, has already filed an amendment that would strike the part of Republican bill that would make this change. The Senate should follow her lead and preserve minimum statutory thresholds for bank capital.
Private equity-owned and -backed nursing homes had higher COVID-19 infection and fatality rates for residents, and those same facilities had a disproportionate share of the COVID-19 resident and staff cases and deaths relative to public, non-profit, and other for-profit nursing homes in New Jersey, according to a new report from Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF).
The Proposal will impose new costs on beneficiaries, undermine American’s retirement security, and impede investment decisions that would lead to a more sustainable economy and society.