By most accounts, FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg fared poorly at a recent hearing in the House Financial Services Committee. This is perhaps especially true with respect to questions about FACEBOOK’s Libra project—the technotrust’s ambitious attempt to mint “real money” for worldwide use.
Halloween is a fun time of year where we allow ourselves to be “scared” by haunted houses, ghosts and zombies. But there’s nothing fun about Zombie Debt — which is time-barred debt that is past the legal limit for which it can be collected. The
A video obtained by consumer watchdog groups Allied Progress and Americans for Financial Reform shows payday industry executives bluntly discussing how campaign contributions to the Trump campaign has bought them access to his administration. In a recent webinar, predatory lenders reveal their plan for using campaign cash to lock in a final CFPB payday rule that enriches them at consumers’ expense.
“We have here a striking example of how money in American politics leads to the abuse of consumers in the financial services marketplace,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.
Small business advocates, consumer groups, and civil-rights advocates today sent a letter to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) criticizing the agencies’ decision to file an amicus brief supporting a predatory small business lender that used a bank to evade state interest rate laws so that it could make a 120% annual percentage rate (APR) $550,000 loan.
Coalition letter in support of the Consumer Credit Control Act.
AFR Language Access Task Force and partner organizations sent up a letter in support of legislation to restore the URLA language preference question.
The AFR Education Fund wrote to the FDIC urging them to maintain comprehensive disclosure requirements for securitizations that are backed by depository banks. The agency is proposing to exempt private offerings from these requirements. Most of the toxic mortgage securitizations sold prior to the financial crisis were private offerings.
“When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress this week, he’ll likely try to justify the launch of the Libra cryptocurrency in the face of regulatory attempts to block it. But make no mistake: This project is an effort to mint a global supercurrency — and harness power beyond government reach.” Raúl Carrillo, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Demand Progress Education Fund
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Constitution allows the president to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) only for cause.