Every year, American savers lose up to $40 billion because brokers give them bad advice. In spite of this, SEC Chair Jay Clayton has proposed new rules that won’t stop conflicts of interests that lead brokers to rip off their clients. The SEC should protect small investors, not give away the store to Wall Street.
On March 7, 2019, AFR Senior Policy Counsel Linda Jun offered testimony at a hearing entitled: “Putting Consumers First: A Semi-Annual Review of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” before the House Financial Services Committee.
This decision increases risks to the public. It is just one of numerous current and proposed deregulatory changes, to both the stress tests and other prudential requirements, which are currently in process at banking regulators.
Today, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger is set to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee, marking her first oversight hearing since being narrowly confirmed last December. Kraninger will now have to answer to a new chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, and a majority that is demanding answers to why the agency has sided with the industry over consumers.
New members of Congress demonstrated substantially less reliance on money from the financial services industry than incumbents who won re-election in 2018. First-term Democratic members of the House raised, on average, 17 percent of the money for their campaign committees from small donors, compared with 9.4 percent by Democratic incumbents who won re-election.
Letter from 51 organizations supporting the Consumers First Act
On Tuesday, Senator Schatz (D-HI) and Representative DeFazio (D-OR) introduced the Wall Street Tax Act, a bill that would tax the sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives at a rate of 10 cents per $100 of Wall Street transactions.
On behalf of the 61 undersigned organizations, we are writing to urge you to co-sponsor the Wall Street Tax Act of 2019 being introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.).
On February 28, 2019, AFR Senior Fellow Heather Slavkin Corzo offered testimony at a hearing entitled “Legislative Proposals on Capital Formation and Corporate Governance,” before the Senate Banking Committee. Read or download a PDF version of the testimony by following this link.
AFR opposed twelve bills that would leave investors more vulnerable to harm and abuse, and make the nation’s capital markets less safe, and supported five of the measures that would improve disclosures or investor protections.