On July 24, Americans for Financial reform hosted a conference looking back at the response to the 2008 crisis, and towards future efforts to ensure that the financial system is more stable, and fair for all. Click here to access the agenda, video, and (soon) the transcript
“The proposed Borrower Defense rule sacrifices students’ rights in order to line the pockets of executives at for-profit colleges, an industry that has shown time and again that it will use taxpayer dollars to deceive and defraud its own students.” said Alexis Goldstein, AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst. “With this rule and its extreme and absurd barriers to relief, Devos effectively tells students that if a school scams them, they’re on their own.”
Nearly a decade after the crisis broke, we need the public interest, not Wall Street’s narrow pursuit of maximum benefits for a tiny few to guide financial policy. But Wall Street’s money is an enormously powerful force pushing the other way.
Brett Kavanaugh’s ruling, later overturned by the full DC circuit, that an independant CFPB is unconstitutional, is but one powerful indicator of the danger he would pose as a Supreme Court justice. Stripping financial regulators like CFPB of their independence means weaker consumer protections.
There was no evidence before her confirmation hearing that Kathy Kraninger would champion the interests of consumers, and there’s no evidence of it afterwards either.
Kavanaugh found that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional but was overturned in a thoughtfully reasoned decision that found many faults with his analysis. Independent agencies, which have existed in the United States for nearly a century, are vital institutions for creating a government that does not only serve wealthy interests.