The Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund views the current state of the stablecoin market as a danger to consumers and to financial stability, and we are disappointed that the President’s Working Group (PWG) has focused on Congressional action as the central path for responding to these challenges.
Americans for Financial Reform and allies today rallied in front of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to highlight Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s failure to protect the U.S. economy from major systemic threats like climate change, racial and economic inequality, excessive risk-taking from the big banks, and private equity firms extracting wealth from communities and workers across the nation.
AFREF joined a comment letter in response to the OCC’s proposal to rescind its 2020 rule regarding the Community Reinvestment Act regulations. The letter urges the OCC to rescind the final rule as quickly as possible.
AFR joined NCLC, CRL, NCRC, and Open Markets in sending a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen opposing a bank charter for stablecoin issuers that would give them preemption rights without the full obligations and oversight required for insured depository banks.
AFREF joined over 100 other groups in sending a letter urging President Biden to cancel student debt.
At a town hall hosted by United for Respect and Americans for Financial Reform, workers and leaders across industries came out strongly in support of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. The event focused on the devastating impact of private equity firms on the quality and quantity of jobs across industries.
AFREF joined a letter urging Ambassador Susan Rice to place a high priority on ensuring data-driven technologies, including algorithmic decision making, artificial intelligence, and machine learning increasingly used to make important decisions about people’s lives, protect civil rights, prevent unlawful discrimination, and advance equal opportunity.
AFR joined a letter to Congress highlighting the urgent need to include targeted first generation down payment assistance (DPA) in the Build Back Better Act.
“Whether it is preserving favored tax loopholes or forestalling more comprehensive reform, private fund executives spend on politics for the purpose of getting richer at the expense of everyone else,” Ricardo Valadez, private equity campaign manager at AFR, said.
Wall Street private equity and hedge funds pumped at least $627 million into the political process – campaign contributions and lobbying – during the 2019-2020 election cycle. The sum, amounting to about $858,000 each day, reflects the meteoric rise in the size and scope of the private funds industry, which has come to control vast swaths of the American economy over the last decade.