“There is overwhelming agreement that the lack of adequate regulation of the financial markets has cost the U.S. economy millions of jobs and many trillions of dollars in lost wealth. While Wall Street profits have recovered, many Americans are still struggling. Support for this legislation is support for eliminating the ability of regulators to prevent the next financial crisis.”
“HR 5 (the Regulatory Accountability Act), HR 78 (the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act), and HR 238 (the Commodity End User Relief Act) — would severely damage the capacity of the Federal government to protect the public. This legislation would disastrously weaken oversight of major Wall Street institutions and financial markets. Proper oversight of big banks and financial markets is crucial to the economic well-being of workers, families, and communities …The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated beyond doubt that the well-being of America’s working families is dependent on strong and effective regulation of Wall Street financial markets. These three pieces of legislation would cripple the capacity to properly regulate such markets. We urge you to reject all three.”
“Mr. Kantwill’s appointment, along with the retirement of Holly Petraeus, who has led the Servicemember Affairs office for the past five years, highlights the CFPB’s extensive work on behalf of military personnel, veterans, and their families, long a favorite target demographic for financial predators.”
“The REINS Act is radical legislation that would upend decades of administrative law practices dating back to the New Deal era in the 1930s. The bill requires explicit approval of any ‘major regulation’ by both the House and Senate within 70 days in order for that rule to take effect. This requirement would create crippling barriers to administrative actions necessary to protect the public and implement the law.”
We strongly support using Consolidated Foreign Subsidiary (FCS) status as the basis for cross border enforcement rather than the more amorphous and subjective “guaranteed subsidiary” status. …We strongly disagree with the Commission’s proposal to exclude a wide range of transactions involving foreign branches and affiliates of U.S. swap dealers from external business conduct requirements.
We are deeply concerned that the Investment Company Institute (ICI) Letter lays out a set of changes to the Proposed Rule which wold effectively negate the derivatives exposure limits in the rule and render them useless as a tool for controlling speculative leverage at registered funds, as is required by the 1940 Act. …This change would not simply modify the relative weighting of derivatives exposures, but would result in a massive increase in the absolute limit on derivatives risk exposure.
Americans for Financial Reform applauds the Department of Education’s final decision to de-recognize a major accreditor of for-profit colleges, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). The Department’s decision to no longer recognize ACICS is an important step toward ensuring that students and taxpayers do not bear the burden of illegal and fraudulent acts by for-profit colleges.
In the new political environment, it is likely that there will be a heavy emphasis on the capital formation mission of the SEC. The IAC should play a critical role in reminding the Commission that investor protection is crucial to stable and effective capital formation. …Improving financial entity disclosures is crucial if we are to improve market discipline for large financial entities and investor discipline for funds.
“Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform, a group that wants tougher regulation of Wall Street, said that the NEC and Treasury would provide the core economic policy advice to the new administration and would have a tremendous voice in future regulatory appointments. ‘Trump talked about the rigged system. [This] is a recipe for maintaining that rigged status quo,” he said.”
On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), we are writing to oppose HR 5143, the “International Insurance Standards Act”. …Even without the amendment, HR 5143 places unreasonable and unworkable barriers on international negotiations important to the oversight of global insurance companies. We should not forget that an insurance company, AIG, was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis and received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. The $182 billion AIG bailout went to cover losses in investment banking type activities like the sale of credit default swaps and the securities lending business.