New report revealing how in the last 10 years, a staggering 597,000 people working at retail companies owned by private equity firms and hedge funds have lost their jobs. An estimated additional 728,000 indirect jobs have been lost at suppliers and local businesses, meaning Wall Street’s gamble on retail has led to more than 1.3 million job losses in total.
In practice, that meant they often sold off real estate holdings, cut workers’ pay and benefits, and did away with jobs to turn a quick profit for investors, according to Heather Slavkin Corzo, a senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform and the director of capital markets policy for the labor union AFL-CIO. “When a private equity firm steps in, it’s a classic case of ‘heads I win, tails you lose,” Corzo said. “They have a real short-term focus on extracting as much cash as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Lisa Donner, Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit consumer advocacy organization strongly supports the bill. “These powerful interests have rigged the rules to enable financial engineering that lets a tiny handful of people extract vast wealth at everyone else’s expense. It is time to change the laws to protect workers, communities, and pensions.”
Our economy is in crisis. Wall Street billionaires have bought our politicians and engineered our laws to make it easier to buy and pillage major companies, line their own pockets, and escape consequences it has on working people and our communities when the company fails.
On July 23, 2019, AFR Education Fund submitted a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opposing a proposal that would create exemptions that would permit U.S. banks – and international banks active in the U.S. market – to do large-scale derivatives dealing in the U.S. without being designated as derivatives dealers under Dodd-Frank Act rules.
“Financial education isn’t going to stop a company from misapplying your mortgage payment or the wrongful repossession of a car,” observes Linda Jun, a senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “The financial crisis wasn’t about people suddenly forgetting how to save. That was a very minor aspect of what happened. There were these bad actors that preyed on people with deceptive fees and unfair practices and discrimination. The point of having a financial regulator that protects consumers is to bring these shady behaviors to an end.”
“Private equity and hedge funds now wield enormous influence over the American economy, often with terrible consequences for workers and communities,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, one of the groups backing the bill, in a statement.
“He was at the center of the industry effort to undo Dodd-Frank in the back rooms, and in terms of intimidating regulators and overturning important parts of it, he had a lot of success,” recalled Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a group that supports the law.
“Most of the rules that were costing industry a lot of money, he was the lead on trying to overturn them,” Stanley added.
“Private equity and hedge funds now wield enormous influence over the American economy, often with terrible consequences for workers and communities,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. “We need effective rules of the road to stop predatory practices by these Wall Street giants.”
Briefing on Stop Wall Street Looting Act of 2019 will be at 3pm ET. To join call RSVP to Kyra Sadovi, kyra@ourfinancialsecurity.org and dial (800) 230-1096 and ask for “Private Equity Legislation” conference call.