Americans for Financial Reform

AFR in the News: Ex-federal officials form group to combat rollback of consumer protections in higher ed (Washington Post)

“A cadre of attorneys and policy advisers from the Obama administration is teaming up to do what they say Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seems incapable of doing: protecting students. ‘Rather than collaborating to get more relief to students who’ve fallen prey to industry scams, and to prevent future abuses, DeVos has chosen to make oversight more difficult and accountability harder to come by,’ said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform.”

TOWS Joint Statement: Groups demand Wall Street pay its fair share in taxes

Washington DC – On Tuesday, groups with the Take on Wall Street campaign made their voices heard outside a Senate Finance Committee hearing, opposing tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations, and demanding that tax legislation focus on closing loopholes and making Wall Street

AFR in the News: Gary Cohn is Giving Goldman Sachs Everything It Ever Wanted (The Intercept)

“No other piece of Dodd-Frank “mattered to Goldman quite like the Volcker Rule, which would protect banks’ solvency by limiting their freedom to make speculative trades with their own money. Unless Goldman could initiate what [AFR Policy Director Marcus] Stanley called the ‘complexity two-step’ — win a carve-out so a new rule wouldn’t interfere with legitimate business and then use that carve-out to render a rule toothless — Volcker would slam the door shut on the entire direction in which Blankfein and Cohn had taken Goldman.”

Joint Statement: House Approves Special Protections for Payday Lenders

“The vote [came] during the debate over the Financial Services and General Government bill, which funds some basic functions of the federal government, including the Treasury Department… Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) introduced an amendment to take this language out of the appropriations bill and continue to allow the CFPB to regulate payday lenders as it regulates all financial services businesses. The amendment failed with four Republicans joining Ellison to protect borrowers and three Democrats choosing to side with payday predators.”

AFR Statement: Delay of Fiduciary A Ripoff of Retirement Savers, Gift to Wall Street’s Financial Advisers

Retirement savers need the fiduciary rule, fully enforced, to help ensure they can enjoy a dignified retirement. See the story of Steve Wingate to learn what happens without this common-sense protection.

AFR Comment: Don’t Delay the Fiduciary Rule, Don’t Try to Kill It Either

The Department of Labor should simply let the fiduciary rule, as written, take full effect. The effort to delay is nothing but an effort to buy time for creating a rationale to roll back the rule, and an abuse of a regulatory process set down in law. Enough.

SOR Statement: Don’t Delay the Fiduciary Rule, Protect American Retirement Savers

Members of the Save Our Retirement coalition speak out forcefully against the Department of Labor’s proposed delay of the fiduciary rule, a common-sense protection that would ensure savers get the best advice possible.

Letter to Regulator: AFR, 18 Organizations Call for Comprehensive Data on Small Business Lending

We call on the Bureau: to require reporting on the full breadth of small business lending; to capture important data about loans applied for and made; and to complete the rulemaking and begin collection of these data expeditiously.

AFR in the News: Before its massive data breach, Equifax fought to kill a rule allowing victims to sue (LA Times)

“The regulation, issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on July 10 and scheduled to go into effect in mid-January, came under attack by Republicans in Congress ‘before the ink was even dry,’ says Amanda Werner of Americans for Financial Reform, which is fighting to retain the rule… Consumer privacy advocates hope that the Equifax debacle will remind senators of the importance of the rule. ‘We need to look at how consumers are going to be able to hold these firms accountable,’ Werner says.”

AFR Statement: Banks Require Forced Arbitration But Won’t Defend It Publicly

Bankers response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren about use of forced arbitration and cite tired, old arguments. But they won’t say publicly they want the CFPB’s rule reversed.