Washington, D.C. – The announcement by Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter that the Department of Justice is willing to block bank mergers even after they have been approved by their primary regulators represents a welcome sea change after decades in which government authorities waved through consolidation in this industry.
Writes AFR’s Caroline Nagy: “The climate crisis is exacerbating our housing affordability crisis. The Federal Housing Finance Agency house price index hit an all-time high in June, pushing the American dream of home-ownership further out of reach. And with homelessness on the rise, record numbers of Americans struggle to secure affordable housing, leading many to move into fire- and flood-prone areas.”
The President has made it clear: it’s time to fight consolidation, not facilitate it. In reviewing lessons learned from this most recent banking crisis to better prevent the next one, the regulators must be full-throated and clear in their affirmation that robust regulation and competition, not consolidation, will lead to a healthier, safer, and more vibrant financial system. Banks must exist to serve the needs of the American people, not the other way around – and it is regulators’ critical task to ensure so.
“There is now bipartisan momentum to pass legislation to hold executives more accountable when Wall Street takes outsized risks that pay off for executives but not the rest of us,” Natalia Renta, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, said in an email. “It is a welcome change that some Republicans are finally joining forces with Democrats to advance an important aspect of financial reform.”
A new report reveals that the top five private equity firms collected over $850 million in Medicare revenue and operated almost 280 locations in 2020. These findings should sound an alarm bell for antitrust regulators, according to the report’s authors, Diana L. Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, and Oscar Valdes Viera, research manager for Americans for Financial Reform. They spoke to McKnight’s Home Care in a Newsmakers podcast.
AFR urged opposition to bill doubling down on the so-called Opportunity Zones program that has brought little to no benefit to communities while further enriching a handful of wealthy tech and Wall Street investors and real estate titans.
AFR led a letter signed by 84 national, state, and local groups ranging from civil rights, consumer protection, labor unions, antitrust, and general public interest groups voicing our collective support for the work and mission of the CFPB. In the letter we highlight the importance of an agency dedicated solely to consumer protection and the work the CFPB has done to make customers whole after harm was done. We again push back on the agenda to limit the agency’s effectiveness by subjecting the agency to annual appropriations, changing its leadership structure to a commission, and the most recent proposal to raise the asset threshold for companies under the CFPB’s supervision to $50 billion from the current $10 bn threshold.
Washington, D.C. – Wells Fargo has racked up a record of numerous egregious abuses against its own customers that are detailed in a new scandal tracker released by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based megabank, has been embroiled in a series of scandals, lawsuits, and customer abuses over the past decade. Despite public outrage and legal actions, the bank’s executives have failed to address the issues adequately. They have been accused of lying to Congress, neglecting shareholder complaints, and evading accountability for their wrongdoings while claiming to make improvements.
We are thrilled to announce that our Advocacy and Legislative Director, Renita Marcellin, is a featured speaker at EconCon 2023 (June 8-9). Marcellin is sharing insights on the reasons behind the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and delving into other important topics.