Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren joined regulators and experts for a discussion of the progress made, and the work yet to be done, in building a financial system that is safer and fairer and does a better job of serving the real economy and the country as a whole.
“In addition to [a] dangerous and highly partisan rollback of financial regulations, the legislation takes aim at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that is succeeding at its job of making the consumer finance markets safer and fairer. The appropriations bill contains policy riders that would dramatically weaken the CFPB by making it the only bank regulator which does not have independent funding, and by replacing the CFPB’s single director with a five-member commission – a known recipe for gridlock.”
Today, in a win for servicemembers—who are too often the targets of harmful lending practices—the Department of Defense announced finalized rules to close gaps in the Military Lending Act (MLA) regulations that have allowed for exorbitantly high-interest rate loans to persist for men and women
“This is a huge problem – one that, over time, can easily add up to a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement savings. Under the current rules, some of the financial professionals offering retirement investment advice are legally bound to look out for the best interests of their clients; but other professionals, while perceived as having such a duty and clearly benefiting from the perception, are free to put their own interests first, even if that means saddling their clients with needlessly high fees or inappropriate risks.”
“On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), we are writing to express our opposition to “The Federal Reserve Reform Act of 2015”. Among other responsibilities, the Federal Reserve is the single most significant regulator of U.S. financial institutions, including the large Wall Street banks that played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. “
“Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spoke about the Dodd-Frank financial reform act in an interview with Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. ‘David can beat Goliath – that’s the meaning of Dodd-Frank,’ said the senator, who was a founding member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established under the act. ‘We built Dodd-Frank with the biggest, most powerful institutions fighting us every inch of the way.'”
AFR put together a video with Senator Elizabeth Warren to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Dodd-Frank, and to discuss the next steps facing financial reform.
With the rulemaking process moving into its final stages, the Department of Labor received a delivery today of petitions in which more than 230,000 signers call for action to protect Americans against self-serving retirement advice. The signatures were gathered by CREDO Action, MoveOn.org, Americans for Financial Reform, and Public Citizen. Ethel Sprouse, the former Mayor of Cedar Bluff, Alabama, accompanied the petition deliverers and told her story at the event.
The Consumer Reporting in Bankruptcy Act of 2015 will keep borrowers from continuing to be haunted and harmed by debts discharged in bankruptcy. Millions of consumers who are in bankruptcy find themselves continuing to deal with debts that remain on their credit reports even though they have been discharged. Passage of this bill would be a big help to consumers who too often have their credit scores negatively impacted by debts erroneously remaining on their reports, or pay debts they do not owe.
A new Lake Research poll, commissioned by Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending, finds strong, continued, bipartisan support for government regulation of financial services and products. In marked contrast to the typical trendline of public opinion after a disaster, this is