“Runaway pay, repeated studies have shown, inhibits teamwork, reduces employee morale and productivity, and encourages executives to make dangerous short-term bets. The SEC heard from hundreds of thousands of people about this rulemaking; the messages and comments were overwhelmingly positive, and rightly so.”
“‘Fixing much of this could have been done 10 years ago by higher capital requirements, which we failed to do, but we need to move more in that direction,” [Sherrod] Brown, now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said at a press conference this month with Americans for Financial Reform.'”
CFPB Director Richard Cordray accepted delivery yesterday of a set of birthday-card-style petitions in which more than 13,500 Americans expressed their support and gratitude for the Bureau’s efforts “to safeguard American consumers, families and communities against the deceptive and abusive practices of big banks, cred card companies, and unscrupulous lenders.” The signatures were gathered by Americans for Financial Reform, National People’s Action, and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Recent months have seen increasing claims by some industry participants and their allies that new regulations are negatively impacting bond market liquidity in ways that may harm the economy. What is the truth of these claims? Is there in fact a serious problem with bond market liquidity? Are recent market events such as the October 15th Treasury market disruption related to new regulation, or to other market changes such as increases in electronic trading? How should regulators respond?
“With the package of bills it has scheduled for markup today, the House Financial Services Committee is threatening to take America back down the road of Wall Street deregulation — the road that led to the financial and economic calamity of 2008-09. While these measures deal with a range of financial practices and entities, most of them have a common theme: in one way or another, they would make it easier for banks, lending companies and other inside players to take advantage of consumers, homeowners, or taxpayers.”
“We are writing to express our concerns about, and in most cases our opposition to, a number of the bills being marked up in the House Financial Services Committee today. The bills we have highlighted below include harmful deregulatory measures that would reduce protections for consumers as well as the financial system as a whole. “
“A funding measure approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday contains an outrageous sneak attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the reforms of the Dodd-Frank Act. The FY2016 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill incorporates the entirety of a 229-page financial deregulation bill – one that had been rejected by every Democrat on the Banking Committee, the proper venue for such legislation.”
“The financial system that pushed the U.S. economy to the edge of collapse in 2008 was a doubly rigged game. It was set up to inflate the profits of banks and insiders twice over—first through products designed to bilk consumers and investors, and second through massive speculation, with taxpayers ultimately paying for the bets that went bad. It was a dishonest system and a dangerous one, and while Dodd-Frank was not a complete fix for either problem, it has made progress on both.”
“On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform, the leading public interest coalition that supported enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and its members, including the undersigned, we write both to explain the importance of the Act and to point out that, while numerous opponents of financial reform have challenged the act’s constitutionality, none have prevailed, in any court. “