SEC Building

Letters to Regulators: Letter to the SEC in Response to Request for Comment on Certain Information Providers Acting as Investment Advisors

AFREF sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting its proposal to treat index providers as investment advisers given the many traits of index providers that resemble investment advice.

Such proposals are necessary as index funds have grown to become a multi-trillion dollar industry but one whose decisions to include or exclude issuers from the indices, and which many fund managers must closely follow, remain opaque and feature a number of conflicts-of-interest. 

Crypto skeptics have been debating online for years. Now they’re organizing.

Hays said other Washington advocacy groups are putting more time and money into research, but he said he’s used to being outnumbered. “This is pretty typical with progressive advocacy work,” he said. “As a general rule, there are fewer of us than there are on the other side. And crypto has grown so dramatically that a lot of different advocacy organizations have been slow to recognize it.” 

Blog: Congress Takes Historic Step to Tax Stock Buybacks

Schumer uttered those words as the Senate was on the brink of passing the Inflation Reduction Act—the compromise reconciliation bill that resulted from prolonged, heated negotiations amongst Democrats.  The version that will go to President Biden includes something brand-new in U.S. economic policy: a one percent excise tax on stock buybacks, which reached an astonishing $882 billion last year.

Letter to Regulators: Letter to the Federal Reserve on the Community Reinvestment Act Proposed Rulemaking

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, along with 25 undersigned organizations, is pleased to submit comments responding to the Joint Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPR) from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively “the agencies”) regarding changes to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA).