Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Opposition to the CFTC’s Proposed Rulemaking and its Dangerous Precedent

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Consumer Federation of America, Food & Water Watch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Public Citizen sent a letter sharing their grave concerns with the justification and potentially calamitous precedent contained in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) proposed rulemaking for the Investment of Customer Funds by Futures Commission Merchants and Derivatives Clearing Organizations. This proposal would expand the list of permitted investments for customer funds to include foreign debt which could put customers at undue financial risk — avoiding such risk was the rationale for prohibiting these transactions in 2011 after the MF Global meltdown.

In The News: Banks prepare to take on the Biden administration over billions of dollars in overdraft fees (Associated Press)

“The CFPB has done its homework here,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for the left-leaning Americans for Financial Reform. “Some banks have gotten rid of overdrafts entirely and the world is still spinning on its axis. If bankers can’t run a business without relying on gotcha fees, they should find a new line of work.”

Letter to Regulators: Strong Basel Capital Standards Support Growth

The bank lobby is spending vast lobbying dollars to cloak themselves in the mantle of preserving access to credit. But the truth that the banks avoid debating is that the overwhelming impact of higher bank capital is – by design – to restrict how risky and how big the more speculative aspects of their business, notably their trading and investment bank operations can grow.

In The News: Banks Fine-Tune Critiques of US Capital Plan to Sway Fed’s Michael Barr (Bloomberg)

Banks are spending “vast lobbying dollars to cloak themselves in the mantle of preserving access to credit,” [AFR] said. “But the truth that the banks avoid debating is that the overwhelming impact of higher bank capital is — by design — to restrict how risky and how big the more speculative aspects of their business, notably their trading and investment bank operations, can grow.”