AFR joined 29 other individuals and organizations representing students, consumers, veterans, servicemembers, and civil rights to send a letter to Education Secretary DeVos raising concerns around the questionable sale of EDMC to the Dream Center Foundation.
“We are seriously concerned about what Jay Clayton’s leadership will mean for investors and the economy. His longtime client, Goldman Sachs, played a central role in the devastating financial crisis of 2008 and has a long record of questionable market behavior. Clayton himself has numerous direct personal conflicts of interest.”
“…We urged the Commission to be more aggressive in laying out structural reforms to the markets and more specific limits on dangerous automated trading practices. The current Supplemental NPRM does not change our basic assessment, as it maintains the basic framework of the 2015 NPRM, with no movement toward additional specificity in risk limits or risk control requirements or reduced discretion for market actors in designing and implementing risk controls…
“‘It’s hard to find a more egregious example of Wall Street billionaires rigging the rules for their own advantage than the carried interest loophole,’ said Jon Green, Campaign Manager for the Take on Wall Street campaign. ‘It is an outrageous and unfair benefit for the wealthy and powerful for no reason other than that they are wealthy and powerful. Every member of Congress should stand with Senator Baldwin and Representative Levin in supporting this bill.'”
The committee, with the backing of the Trump administration, is gearing up to pass a bill that would give Wall Street and assorted predatory lenders a free hand to abuse consumers and investors, and raise the likelihood of another financial crisis. Congress should be looking for ways to enforce the rules on Wall Street, not reward their army of lobbyists.
“Every additional day that the rule is not implemented and enforced is a day that allows Wall Street firms to drain their clients’ hard-earned savings to the tune of $45 million. Americans saving for an independent and secure retirement need and deserve lawmakers who side with their interests, not Wall Street’s.”
“This legislation would be better dubbed ‘Wall Street’s CHOICE Act,’ because it would have a devastating effect on the capacity of regulators to protect the public interest and defend consumers from Wall Street wrongdoing and the economy from risks created by too-big-to-fail financial institutions.” — testimony at House Financial Services Committee hearing, April 26
“What Americans want and will continue to demand is, of course, the exact opposite of what Trump’s tax plan represents. They want to see the loopholes closed and Wall Street paying more, not less. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Keith Ellison have proposed a sales tax on Wall Street transactions; that would be a good start. Working families pay taxes when they buy a car or a pair of shoes.”
“‘The level of venom directed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that is successfully carrying out its mission of preventing tricks and traps that harm American families, is astounding,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan and nonprofit coalition of consumer and other citizen groups. ‘The changes proposed by the legislation only make sense if you want to weaken consumer protections and make it easier for Wall Street, and predatory lenders, to profit by cheating people.’”
AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst Alexis Goldstein appeared on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday, April 26th to discuss how the Trump Administration’s tax plan would benefit Wall Street and leave ordinary American workers behind. “We have two former bankers from Goldman Sachs announcing a tax plan that–from the details that we do know–will dramatically cut taxes for big banks like Goldman Sachs,” Goldstein said.