Amidst a whirlwind of anti-ESG activity at the House Financial Services Committee this month, labor leaders and allies reminded Capitol Hill that workers’ hard-earned money is at the center of this controversy. The off-the-record briefing for Hill staff — titled “Protecting Workers’ Retirement Security from Anti-ESG Attacks” — was planned by Americans for Financial Reform and sponsored by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Despite being in a legal fight for its very existence, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues to carry out its mission to promote fairness and transparency in our financial system and ensure that consumers are protected from predatory and deceptive practices. Its ability to perform under pressure is one more reason why we need a strong CFPB.
Instead of having his most talented employees figuring out how to better serve customers or allocate credit to the real economy, Jamie Dimon has his best and brightest scheming how to evade tougher rules on bank capital that regulators are writing to make the financial system safer.
The banking crisis of 2023, an event appearing on few bingo cards, has thrown a harsh light on the urgency of managing the multitude of crises that the world now faces – climate change being the most existential of them. Factor in the vexing problem that economists have repeatedly underestimated the economic impacts of climate change and we have a straightforward case for proactively hardening the financial system against its effects.
We now know that Fed Chair Jerome Powell sought to head off questions about responsibility and accountability around March 12, the day federal regulators resorted to a blanket deposit guarantee to stop the crisis from spreading. Perhaps that’s because Powell has an extensive record supporting deregulation and lighter supervision, even before he was confirmed to head the central bank.
This week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a notice of appeal in its redlining lawsuit against Townstone Financial and its owner Barry Sturner as part of an ongoing case. In 2020, the CFPB accused Sturner and Townstone, a nonbank mortgage lender, of violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) by discouraging prospective Black applicants from applying for their mortgages. Unfortunately, in February 2023, Judge Franklin Valerrama of the U.S.
