Tag Archives: Blog

Blog: Top 10 Reasons to Block the Capital One-Discover Merger

Today, Americans for Financial Reform and many allies will take our case directly to federal banking regulators and demand that they block the proposed Capital One-Discover merger. Federal regulators have rubber stamped thousands of bank mergers over the past few decades, consolidating the industry to create risky megabanks, reducing choices and raising prices for depositors and small businesses. The wave of mergers beginning in the mid-1990s contributed to the contagious fragility of the banking system during the 2008 financial crisis. Here are the top 10 reasons to block this merger:

Blog: Wall Street Lobby Surfaces New Nonsensical Legal Claim Over CFPB Funding

Last month the Supreme Court delivered a crushing defeat to Wall Street’s challenge to funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Undeterred, Wall Street is now trying to distort the Supreme Court’s decision to conjure up a new and utterly nonsensical argument about the legality of the CFPB’s funding. The trial balloon for this argument was launched in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Hal Scott, a retired Harvard Law professor and longtime industry shill whose specialty is neither consumer nor constitutional issues but international finance. Scott’s notion has already been swatted down by several credentialed legal experts of various political stripes.

Blog: CFPB Takes Action on Consumer Protection Violations in the Corporate Fine Print

When consumers purchase many financial products and services they have no say over specific terms and conditions, only the choice of whether to sign or not. Yet, hidden in the fine print in virtually every contract is another grave price consumers unwittingly pay: the removal of many of their legal rights and protections. If consumers want financial services, the fine print — and the proper regulation thereof — is critically important.