In The News: How the Fed’s inflation battle is already slamming the economy

Andrew Park, a senior policy analyst at the progressive Americans for Financial Reform, said a lot of companies also failed to take advantage of the debt binge during the pandemic to make productive investments, citing private equity-owned firms that borrowed money to pay dividends to shareholders. “When you have all this corporate debt that’s been issued, what happens is, it’s less of an immediate implosion and more of a drawn-out process where the debt becomes an amplifier” to any recession. That’s because people lose their jobs and income, which further dampens economic activity.

Cryptocurrency

Why Crypto is not the Solution to Financial Inclusion

Americans for Financial Reform and the Take on Wall Street campaign gathered several experts on July 1 to lay out the multiple ugly truths about crypto and addressed a few reasons why we should not take the promises made by its most enthusiastic advocates at face value, and why regulators need to use the authority they already have to oversee this market.

In The News: Bank lobbyists’ attacks on CFPB obscure the real ‘rogues’ (American Banker)

Polling [from Americans for Financial Reform] has consistently found that the public likes having a strong CFPB. It’s why banking lobbyists try to harp on images of government bureaucrats telling people what to do. But the public on the whole appreciates that the financial services industry is massive and powerful; it put nearly $3 billion into the 2020 elections, [according to AFR research].

SEC Building

Letters to Regulators: Letter to the SEC Commenting on Listing Standards for Recovery of Erroneously Awarded Compensation

AFREF submitted a comment letter in support of the SEC’s proposed rule on clawbacks of erroneously-awarded executive compensation. Once finalized, the rule will signify the long-overdue implementation of a Dodd-Frank provision that sought to improve incentives for honest and transparent corporate governance by creating a mechanism for the clawing back of compensation awarded based on inaccurate financial statements. AFREF submitted a comment in support of the proposed rule in 2015, and submitted this additional comment to answer questions raised by the Commission upon reopening the comment period

News Release: In Evaluating TAB Bank, FDIC Should Consider Consumer Harm, Possible Legal Violations, from Predatory Lending

WASHINGTON – Today a coalition of consumer advocates filed comments with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), including a petition signed by more than 44,500 people and a letter describing hundreds of consumer complaints, urging the FDIC to consider Transportation Alliance Bank’s (TAB Bank) predatory rent-a-bank lending in assessing the bank’s performance in meeting community needs under the Community Reinvestment Act.