“If you mean to stick up for the little guy, and not stick it to the little guy, you don’t pick nominees from industry for agencies that should be protecting the public interest,” said Patrick Woodall, managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform.
“Regulators need to catch up to the reality that the growth and concentration of the asset management industry has fundamentally reshaped how public companies — including listed banks — make decisions,” said Natalia Renta, a senior policy counsel at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
As the Federal Reserve prepares new capital rules for American banks, Wall Street is rolling out its misdirection and bad arguments – as it has for much of the past decade – about why they should not be required to steel themselves against a crisis or downturn. And once again, regulators and Congress must be prepared to ignore their histrionics and strengthen capital requirements.
Washington, D.C. — The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has accepted an amicus brief arguing that syndicated loans are risky debt instruments that pose “significant economic implications for families and communities” and must be regulated as securities, according to Americans for Financial Reform.
Washington, D.C. — The Federal Reserve and other banking regulators made the right call Tuesday by issuing a warning regarding the risks that crypto-assets pose to banking organizations. There is widespread volatility, fraud risk, legal uncertainties, unfair and deceptive practices, run and contagion risks, high levels of concentration and interconnections between firms, and poor risk management and governance found throughout the industry – all of which spells danger for investors and consumers alike.
Washington, D.C. – The record Consumer Financial Protection Bureau settlement with Wells Fargo over widespread wrongdoing in providing auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts represents an opportunity for all federal regulators to force durable change at the oft-penalized megabank.
Ask a reasonable person if discrimination on the basis of race or religion is unfair. The odds are good – very good, according to this AFR poll, – that you’ll get a resounding “yes,” a polite “of course,” or even an incredulous “are you kidding?” Yes. Discrimination. Is. Unfair. But if you try to convince big-bank lobbyists that discrimination is unfair, you won’t get a “yes.” You get a lawsuit, with multiple awful lines of attack, that stands a good chance of succeeding. And that’s not satire.
WASHINGTON-D.C. — A lawsuit filed by the Wall Street lobby attempts to use the increasing corrosion of the judiciary by right-wing judges to enshrine in law a right to discriminate, according to Americans for Financial Reform, a broad coalition of organizations that includes civil rights and racial justice groups.
“When we talk about the [North Carolina] bathroom bills of 2016 and 2017 compared to now, my first response is, well, they haven’t felt that the public pressure that they would be feeling to do something is worth more than the financial benefit they have from doing nothing,” said Mandla Deskins, an advocacy manager for Take on Wall Street, an activist coalition that pushes for financial reform. “That is the calculation that I would assume banks are always making,” Deskins added, “because it’s not like they have some long-standing position against hate.”
Join us on May 21st for an analysis and discussion of the important developments in the regulation and supervision on big banks, and their effects on financial security and economic stability. View the details here, or below.