View or download a PDF of the letter here. Americans for Financial Reform and 348 other consumer, civil rights, labor, legal services and community organizations, and academics wrote to urge Congress to demand action to restore a strong and independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
“All the defenders of the carried interest loophole are saying is that if you don’t let us get richer, we will not serve low-income communities, which is not an argument so much as it is extortion,” said Caroline Nagy, a housing policy specialist at Americans for Financial Reform.
The Business Roundtable’s most recent diatribe against a modest shareholder check on the power of corporate boards and executives came just in time for Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on proxy advisors — firms that provide research and proxy voting recommendations to shareholders.
Another Musk/Big Tech giveaway occurred this week as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped its case against PayPal for skirting prepaid card rules that apply to gift cards and re-chargeable payment apps.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander announced standards by which he will evaluate the net zero plans of the asset managers that oversee the city’s pension assets. He will recommend the boards of trustees of the city’s pensions pursue other asset management options through a bidding process should some of their current asset managers fail to meet those standards.
Since its creation, the bureau has recovered over $21bn for defrauded consumers through enforcement actions against major financial institutions, including a $3.7bn order against Wells Fargo in 2022. There has been broad support for the agency, with a September poll from Americans for Financial Reform finding that 91% of voters believed it is important to regulate financial services to make sure they are fair for consumers – including 95% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans.
Today, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia halted the Trump Administration’s attempted firings of 1,500 Consumer Finance Protection Bureau employees.
The Trump administration’s approval of the biggest, most complex bank merger in decades will raise credit card costs for working families, sap the earnings of small businesses, and undermine community investment.
The most recent plans for the CFPB from the Trump Administration—additional dramatic staff cuts, a narrowing of the agency’s focus, and a reduction in supervision and enforcement—all send the same dangerous message: that bad actors in finance have permission to rip people off with impunity.
President Trump illegally fired two Board members at the National Credit Union Administration yesterday, in yet another effort to incapacitate the agencies responsible for protecting everyday consumers and safeguarding the financial system.