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AFR in the News: Could Courts Take Down the CFPB? (Bloomberg)

“The dispute over the CFPB is the latest attempt by business interests to limit the scope of Dodd-Frank. Backed by Wall Street and corporate lobbyists, Republicans in Congress have tried to roll back various provisions of the law. That effort has so far failed, and now the courts have become an alternative venue for the campaign. ‘The financial industry is using all the tools available to resist the regulation mandated under Dodd-Frank,’ says Brian Marshall, policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform…”

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Letter to Congress: AFR, 52 Organizations Urge Congress to Reject S. 2970, An Impediment to Regulators Efforts to Detect Fraud and Money Laundering

“The undersigned community, consumer and civil rights organizations strongly oppose S. 2790, the Financial Institution Customer Protection Act of 2016, introduced by Senator Cruz. The bill will hamper critical Department of Justice and banking regulator efforts to detect fraud and money laundering, putting consumers and financial institutions at risk of serious financial loss. “

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Joint Letter: AFR, 163 Groups Call for Strong CFPB Action Against Forced Arbitration

“Yesterday, 164 organizations that advocate on behalf of consumers, students, civil rights, labor, small business, and more, sent a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), urging the agency to use its Congressional authority to restrict forced arbitration – the abusive practice in which corporations bury “ripoff clauses” in the fine print of take-it-or-leave-it contracts to block consumers from challenging hidden fees, fraud, and other illegal behavior in court.”

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AFR in the News: Are we repeating history by letting our financial sector get too big? (Washington Post)

“Financialization has been the elephant in the room of economic policy debate — a huge contributing factor to the skyrocketing incomes of a few and the nonliving wages of many, and a force that helps explain our neglected infrastructure, underfunded schools, outlandishly expensive colleges and the phenomenon of graduates impoverished by the high-interest loans that banks thrive on these days.”

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AFR in the News: Wall St. Regulators Propose Stricter Pay Rules for Bankers (NY Times)

““This is pretty clearly an improvement of the 2011 rule, but the 2011 rule was very weak,” said Marcus Stanley, the policy director at the advocacy organization Americans for Financial Reform. Mr. Stanley said he had hoped that banks would have to hold back pay for more than four years because big losses on bank investments can often take longer than that to materialize.”

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AFR Statement: Online and Storefront Payday Lenders are More Alike than Different, CFPB Report Shows

“About half of all online payday loan customers end up paying fees ($185 is the average amount) triggered by failed debit attempts. Some lenders keep on trying to collect in even when there is likely to be no effect other than to increase the cost to the borrower. Some companies will even break a payment into multiple smaller amounts, submitting three $100 requests, for example, instead of one $300 request. A third of the customers hit with such penalties end up having their bank accounts closed involuntarily.”

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Letter to Congress: AFR Urges Senate Committee on Agriculture to Oppose “Commodity End User Relief Act”

“On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform, we are writing to urge you to vote against the “Commodity End User Relief Act”, a bill that reauthorizes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and makes other statutory changes. This legislation makes no progress at all on the key issue facing the CFTC, the severe level of underfunding that prevents the agency from fully and properly implementing its new responsibilities under the Dodd Frank Act. “