President Biden’s renomination of Jerome Powell to chair the Federal Reserve Board is a major disappointment to those of us who have fought for tougher regulation of Wall Street as a key tool for protecting financial stability and building a more just and sustainable economy.
Today, the House passed the Build Back Better Act, sending historic investments in white, Black and Brown working people to the Senate.
AFR, joined by 14 other civil rights, social and racial justice, and immigrant organizations, sent a letter to Congress in support of President Biden’s nomination of Professor Saule Omarova to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
“The administration settled on a smart person with a background in the banking industry and in government as well as path-breaking scholarship on financial regulation,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesperson for Americans for Financial Reform. “In less polarized times, somebody appointed by a Democratic president who worked for a previous Republican administration and for a Wall Street firm would be the kind of candidate everyone can agree on. But we’re at a moment where a candidate acceptable to Wall Street is a candidate that does the bidding of Wall Street. And that’s not acceptable to the public interest.”
AFREF joined a letter urging the Biden Administration to immediately begin the process of implementing reforms outlined in the January 20th memo on “Modernizing Regulatory Review.”
AFR joined a letter to Congress in support of the provision in Build Back Better that limits the Pell grant increase to students attending public and non-profit colleges, excluding for-profit schools.
Americans for Financial Reform supports the introduction of the Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act of 2021. This legislation would extend the 36 percent APR cap on payday and car-title loans in the Military Lending Act (MLA) to cover all borrowers.
AFR joined a letter to Congress supporting Senator Blumenthal’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), to ban forced arbitration for service members suffering financial and employment abuse.
A new Government Accountability Office report confirms several conclusions in AFR’s initial analysis of the Opportunity Zones program.
AFREF sent a letter to the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) on how the agency can coordinate with state insurance regulators and insurers to have the necessary data, supervisory framework, and prudential regulation in a world where climate-related losses continue to rise and pose risks to the entire financial system.