Federal Reserve Board Chairman Powell, you should recuse yourself from the consideration of the Basel III Endgame regulatory capital rule to preserve the integrity of Federal Reserve regulatory decision-making and avoid the appearance of impropriety that would undermine public perception of the central bank’s independence and impartiality. Meeting with big bank CEOs in secret creates the appearance that powerful regulated entities cannot merely influence rulemaking during the public notice and comment period and through their policy arguments, but that they can meet off the record and set regulatory red lines which federal authorities will not cross.
Does paying a $20 “convenience fee” each month on top of your rent just to pay your rent sound reasonable to you? What about paying your landlord a “January fee” just because it happens to be January? Or paying an extra $40 a month for a mandatory “valet trash service” you never wanted in the first place? As unfair and infuriating as these scenarios may seem, paying outrageous, indefensible junk fees is an increasingly common reality for renters in this country.
On Friday, the U. S. Department of Justice took on Wall Street landlords and increasingly unaffordable rents by filing an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, accusing the private-equity-owned firm of facilitating price fixing among the country’s largest corporate landlords. Joined by eight state attorneys general, the lawsuit details how RealPage’s rent-setting software uses private information to raise rents – and, by extension, landlord profits – well beyond what is fair to the general public.
While Disney’s legal ploy seems utterly crazy, most attempts to invalidate forced arbitration clauses are unsuccessful. As a result, forced arbitration clauses pop up in nearly every consumer and employee contract because companies know that people cannot fight back. When you click yes on terms and conditions for subscriptions or services or sign your credit card or employment agreement, you are signing away your legal rights.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is developing legislation aimed at closing the regulatory oversight gap that the cryptocurrency lobby insists is a problem. True, the crypto industry is highly volatile and riddled with scams that expose those that buy cryptocurrencies and tokens to substantial financial losses. But that’s a problem of enforcing existing rules, not regulation. The proposed bill purports to provide regulatory guardrails to this crypto Wild West, but ultimately would give a federal imprimatur to the crypto industry while only offering the patina of the necessary investor and market safeguards needed to protect vulnerable investors.
Today, Americans for Financial Reform and many allies will take our case directly to federal banking regulators and demand that they block the proposed Capital One-Discover merger. Federal regulators have rubber stamped thousands of bank mergers over the past few decades, consolidating the industry to create risky megabanks, reducing choices and raising prices for depositors and small businesses. The wave of mergers beginning in the mid-1990s contributed to the contagious fragility of the banking system during the 2008 financial crisis. Here are the top 10 reasons to block this merger:
