“President Obama stood with consumers and families in making this crucial decision,’ Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement. ‘Now that the CFPB has a director, it finally has its full authority to protect consumers everywhere in the financial marketplace, from a Wall Street bank to a payday lender or from a mortgage company to a credit bureau or anywhere else.'”
Consumers won today when President Obama defied Wall Street interests to make a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama stood with consumers and families in making this crucial decision.
“There is tremendous public support for holding Wall Street accountable, and for ending tricks and traps in the consumer financial marketplace,’ John Carey, spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, said in a statement.
AFR joined Appleseed and the National Consumer Law Center in urging that the CFPB’s Final Regulations on remittances must deliver on Dodd-Frank’s promise of the new consumer protections and disclosures to protect people sending money overseas.
AFR submitted a regulatory comment letter to the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) supporting broad authorization for designation of nonbank financial companies that could pose a threat to the financial system.
“‘The forces arrayed on the sides of this battle are incredibly uneven, as they were also during the efforts to pass Dodd-Frank,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans For Financial Reform. But she added that the Dodd-Frank fight yielded key reforms, even against long odds: ‘The fight’s not done.’”
‘It is a little hard for me to understand because Congress debated, the president signed, they (Collins and Snowe) voted for the bill that included the creation of the bureau as one of its centerpieces,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition that includes consumer and civil rights groups and labor unions. ‘The bureau’s powers are significantly restrained until it has a director in place. So it is kind of going back and trying to undo what was done.’
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – December 10, 2011 – December 16, 2011. Note: This Week in Wall Street Reform will not be complied again until January 6, 2012.
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – December 3, 2011 – December 9, 2011.
“A team of consumer groups warned Tuesday that lobbying by Wall Street could weaken proposed regulations designed to guard against the kind of abusive investment practices that crushed the Bethlehem Area School District in recent years. Speaking at a teleconference, representatives of the Consumer Federation of America, the AFL-CIO, Americans for Financial Reform and Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner said well-financed lobbies are working to disarm regulations initially designed to rein them in.”