AFR and Organizations Urge Members of Congress to Defend the CFPB
AFR and more than fifteen organizations submitted a letter to members of the House Financial Services Committee, calling on them to defend the CFPB from specific legislative attacks.
AFR Statement: The Senate Looks at Student Loan Debt
40 million Americans currently owe some $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, which is making it hard for people to buy cars, homes, and even daily necessities. In one recent survey, 29 percent of borrowers said that student loans had caused them to delay getting married…
So this is a problem that fully deserves the double-barreled attention it is getting from the Senate. And more: it deserves meaningful action from regulators and legislators alike.
AFR in the News: Massad Heads to U.S. Swaps Agency as Wall Street Seeks Rollback
“There is still ‘great risk of going back even on the commitments that have been made final,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform… ‘In no way is he just a caretaker for a job that’s just been completed by somebody else,” Stanley, referring to Massad, said in an interview. ‘To make derivatives reform a reality means taking on some powerful interests and pushing forward against significant opposition and we hope he’s up to it.’”
AFR in the News: OCC to Rotate On-Site Examiners at Banks to Boost Oversight
“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, criticized for missing some high-profile problems such as JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s London Whale losses, will institute a five-year rotation schedule for in-bank examiners, the agency said today in response to a review of its practices by non-U.S. regulators. The regulator also said transfers to the risk-analysis group would reduce the number of on-site examiners.”
AFR Calls on Regulators to Improve Swaps Market Transparency
AFR submitted a comment letter to the CFTC regarding the importance of collecting data essential to analyzing potential systemic risk.
AFR Calls for Strong Action Against For-Profit Colleges that Exploit Students and Federal Aid
“We strongly support the Department of Education’s efforts to keep federal funds from being used to support career education companies that routinely fail to deliver on their promises, leaving students with unmanageable debt. We urge you to stand by the thrust of the regulations the Department proposed in March, and to bolster those regulations in several key ways.”
AFR in the News: SEC Has Revealed Astounding Corruption in Private Equity
“One scam is to fire employees of the private equity firm and rehire them immediately as ‘consultants.’ The investors are responsible for consultants’ salaries, where private equity employees are paid out of their own pockets. Another is taking what most private equity investors believe to be part of management fees, things like legal and compliance costs, and billing their investors for them without the investors properly knowing it. A third is private equity firms lying about the valuation methods they use to tell investors about the returns they make each year. All of these are ways for private equity firms to take money from their investors for themselves.”
AFR Opposes House Bills That Would Weaken The CFPB
AFR sent a letter to members of the House Financial Services Committee today, urging their opposition to a series of anti-CFPB bills being discussed by the committee. The eleven measures under discussion would weaken the CFPB in a variety of ways and make it nearly impossible for the agency to do its job. The bills are part of a continuing pattern to mischaracterize the CFPB’s organization and processes, and if adopted, would harm consumers. The package of legislation being considered also includes a frontal attack on the Bureau’s authority to consider the impact of forced arbitration clauses on consumers—a bill that would eliminate consumers’ access to courts and force them into a rigged and secretive system to settle disputes.
The House Financial Services Committee’s Latest Assault on the CFPB
Five-and-a-half years after the financial crisis, “the great majority of Americans still see a need for tougher regulation of Wall Street and the lending industry, and welcome the existence of a federal agency with a mandate to police rules of fair play in the consumer finance markets.
“At the House Financial Services Committee, however, a different view has taken hold. The big threat, many on that committee seem to believe, comes not from abusive practices in the financial industry, but from the agency that is beginning to do something about them.”
AFR Urges Congress Not to Undermine Financial Regulation
AFR sent a letter to members of the House Financial Services Committee to stop interfering in the efforts of FSOC and OFR to collect data essential to analyzing potential systemic risk. The letter also states AFR’s opposition to HR 4387, legislation that could undermine the ability of our financial regulatory system to respond the kind of risks that led to the financial crisis of 2008.