Americans for Financial Reform

News Category: Blog

Blog: Trump CFPB Drops Case against Zelle, Siding with Banks Over Defrauded Users

The Trump-appointed CFPB leadership dropped its case against digital payment app Zelle, a joint venture between Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America,  delivering a de facto pardon to the company for failing to protect its users from fraud and identity theft that cost customers more than $870 million over seven years. The move comes only a day before the Republican Senate is expected to vote on legislation to permanently weaken oversight of digital payment apps.

Blog: What Now? Investors’ Role in Fighting Financial Deregulation

What Now? Investors’ Role in Fighting Financial Deregulation By Meron Lemmi This presidential administration is poised to roll back financial regulations that protect long-term, diversified investors. Both public and private markets face a wave of deregulatory efforts that would weaken investor protections and undermine corporate accountability.  To lay the groundwork to robustly defend investor protections,

Blog: Trump’s CFPB Drops Case Against Repeat Offender TransUnion For Bait-and-Switch Subscription Hustle

Trump’s CFPB Drops Case Against Repeat Offender TransUnion For Bait-and-Switch Subscription Hustle TransUnion deceived millions into signing up for hard to cancel monthly subscriptions By Christine Chen Zinner Last week, the CFPB dropped 5 pending enforcement cases against companies that swindled or gouged consumers that show the Trump administration siding with broligarchy billionaires like Elon

Blog: Trump’s CFPB Litigation Capitulation Amounts to Pardoning Corporate Wrongdoers

Trump’s CFPB Litigation Capitulation Amounts to Pardoning Corporate Wrongdoers Seven dropped cases would have helped people who were ripped off in financial transactions By Christine Chen Zinner Last week, the day the nominee for the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was testifying before the Senate, Trump’s CFPB dropped five federal enforcement cases,

Blog: The Weird, the Bad, and the Ugly behind Un-stablecoins

 The crypto industry’s Republican allies have introduced retrograde legislation to normalize the crypto assets known as stablecoins. This comforting moniker for a particular class of crypto assets is largely a public relations ploy that obscures their inherent risks. They really should be called un-stablecoins. However, they are a critical component of the crypto industry’s digital casino. And the crypto industry expects a huge return on its $130 million electoral spending spree. As such, passing this legislation would anoint stablecoins with federal imprimatur, exposing more crypto investors and the entire economy to more risk and instability.

Blog: Predatory Fintechs Score as Trump-Musk CFPB Caves on Lawsuit

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been largely shut down by Elon Musk’s team and Acting Director Russell Vought, pulled the plug on a lawsuit against an online lender, SoLo Funds, that the agency had alleged was deceiving borrowers and imposing deceptive fees on more than half a million borrowers.