AFR joined this letter to Congress urging Congress to take the steps needed as soon as possible to clarify that COVID-19 stimulus payments to help households during this public health emergency are exempt from garnishments. View or download pdf here.
AFR and SBPC Send Letter to Navient Demanding Investment in Student Borrowers, not Shareholders Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) sent a letter to the Board of Directors of Navient Corporation urging the company’s board to halt dividends and
AFR Education Fund and Demand Progress Education Fund sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee regarding competition in the digital marketplace. Congress and regulators should promote the tradition of separating banking and commerce, by extending that set of principles to dominant platforms, especially online marketplaces and social networks.
Absent major changes, the Federal Reserve’s multi-trillion-dollar funding programs will reward corporate insiders and financial speculators, without guaranteeing desperately needed help for those hardest-hit by the coronavirus crisis. The Fed needs to set the right priorities for this credit and impose conditions that ensure the benefits of this extraordinary assistance go to those who need it most.
Together, these facilities could deploy up to $2.3 trillion in new credit to the economy during the pandemic crisis period. Without major changes these facilities will not be effective in getting assistance to those most impacted by the crisis, and disclosure and transparency regarding specific borrowers and loan terms is lacking. Our comment provides specific recommendations to address these issues.
AFR Education Fund released the following policy memo analyzing the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented move to provide direct credit to states and localities. A pdf copy of the memo is available here. Review of New Federal Reserve Facilities On April 9th the Federal Reserve announced six
Critics also noted that while the central bank has to share some basic information about the loans, other details, such as how many employees the company has retained or the compensation for its chief executive, might never be shared publicly. “We should ask for the actual deal documents. Why wouldn’t you make those public?” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform.
AFR Education Fund released the following policy memo analyzing the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented move to provide direct credit to states and localities.
Today, 69 community, civil rights, consumer, and student advocacy organizations sent a letter to House and Senate leadership, urging them to include student debt cancellation in the next coronavirus package. The letter also calls on leadership to extend the suspension of payments on federal student loans through March 2021, as current estimates indicate that the economy will not recover to pre-virus levels until the third quarter of 2021.
As organizations that represent the interests of American workers, small businesses, and consumers we applaud Representative Jayapal on a bill that finally puts American workers and small businesses ahead of corporations. This is exactly the type of program we need to keep people on payroll and connected to their important health benefits, address our ballooning unemployment, and lay the foundations for economic recovery.