Americans for Financial Reform

Letters to Congress: Urging Action on $5 Trillion Exempt Offerings/Private Markets

Americans for Financial Reform today wrote to the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions urging members to rely on existing authority by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to gain more transparency into the $5 trillion private markets (“exempt offerings” under SEC Rule 144A and Reg D) to address national security concerns.

News Release: 82 Democratic Members of Congress Urge Biden to Name Postal Board Nominees to “Protect and Expand” a Public USPS, endorsed by 36 public-interest groups

Washington, D.C. – Eighty-two Democratic members of the House of Representatives signed a letter sent to President Biden today urging him to swiftly nominate two new public-service-minded members to the USPS Board of Governors. Thirty-six public interest groups, including Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen, Main Street Alliance, Revolving Door Project, Social Security Works, and Voter Action Project, endorsed the letter.

News Release: Steward Financial Crisis Demonstrates Private Equity’s Threat to Healthcare

Washington, D.C. – The sudden crisis in the Steward hospital system in Massachusetts is a cautionary – and outrageous – tale of how Wall Street’s predatory practices in health care can harm or destroy health institutions in the long term.

News Release: OCC’s Modest Merger Proposal Falls Far Short

Washington, D.C. – The minor changes proposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to the bank merger review process fail to grapple with the harms of consolidation and are no substitute for a thorough rethinking of merger guidelines that have remained unchanged for the last three decades.

In The News: Private-Fund Lobbyists Get Set for High-Stakes SEC Court Fight (The Wall Street Journal)

“The private-funds industry is trying to use its money and resources and a friendly court in order to push back on rule-making. That’s very simply what’s going on here,” said Andrew Park, senior policy analyst with Americans for Financial Reform, which supports the new SEC rules.

News Release: Brief to Supreme Court Highlights Accounting Treatment of Syndicated Loans

Washington, D.C. – Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund is urging the Supreme Court to take up a case, Kirschner v. JP Morgan, that could change the way regulators treat the syndicated loans, and potentially improve investor protections in this $3 trillion market.

In The News: Proposed $350B Federal Reinsurance Program Draws Scrutiny (Law630)

“The math isn’t mathing when it comes to property losses driven by climate change,” Caroline Nagy, senior policy counsel with the progressive group Americans for Financial Reform, said in an interview. “There’s a very good argument to be made that damage caused by climate change is an area where we need the government to take a role.”

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.

News Release: New CFPB Protections on Overdrafts Will Save Consumers Billions

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new protections for big bank customers against abusive overdraft charges is a critical initiative in reforming a practice that has drained billions of dollars in junk fees from consumers.

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.”