“Mr. Kantwill’s appointment, along with the retirement of Holly Petraeus, who has led the Servicemember Affairs office for the past five years, highlights the CFPB’s extensive work on behalf of military personnel, veterans, and their families, long a favorite target demographic for financial predators.”
“[The] question is whether Dodd-Frank will be replaced or just torn down. If Republicans create a regulatory vacuum or simply allow the banks to write their own rules, [AFR’s Marcus Stanley] said, they will have gone too far. ‘It’s obvious that Dodd-Frank is going to come under severe attack both in Congress and the regulatory agencies,’ Stanley said… [T]he first question is going to be, What do you plan to do to actually address these Wall Street abuses? If the answer is, We’re not going to do anything … then that is something we are going to fight really hard on.”
“U.K. banking rules now provide for unpaid bonus awards to be canceled or reduced, or bonuses to be returned or ‘clawed back’ if misconduct is later uncovered. Adjustments in unpaid bonuses within major U.K. banks tripled to about £300 million in 2014, from £100 million in 2010… ‘On a lot of these cultural issues, it seems like the U.K. is tougher than the U.S.,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, an independent advocacy group for effective financial regulation.”
“Contrary to Chairman Hensarling’s pronouncement, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is not subject to onerous executive orders regarding ‘Regulatory Planning and Review.’ The executive orders specifically exclude any agency defined as an ‘independent regulatory agency’ by 44 U.S.C. 3502(5), which lists the CFPB by name. PHH v. CFPB did nothing to change that statutory definition.”
“As the CFPB’s work to stop the Wells Fargo’s fraud demonstrated once again, the CFPB is doing exactly what Congress established it to do: serve as an effective enforcer of fair rules of the road to prevent unfair deceptive and abusive financial practices, practices that led to the financial crisis and cost trillions of dollars in lost homes, lost jobs, and lost wealth… Compromising the CFPB’s independence would be a huge gift to Wall Street greed and a loss for consumers. We are hopeful that this erroneous decision will be overturned.”
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received about a million public comments… That figure is the highest in the agency’s five-year history… Consumer groups such as the Center for Responsible Lending and Americans for Financial Reform formed an alliance and ran a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #StopTheDebtTrap and shepherded people to a comment site…”
“More than 700 groups carrying the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans from every state in the union today called on the nation’s consumer financial watchdog to put forth a strong final rule that will truly end the abuses of payday lending… That message was carried in a letter hand-delivered today to CFPB Director Richard Cordray and signed by national, state and community-based organizations representing seniors, faith denominations and clergy, labor and workers, consumers and veterans among others.”
“Since the release of the Bureau’s proposed rule in June, hundreds of organizations have been gathering comments or borrower stories at faith services, community centers, film screenings, street festivals, concerts, job fairs, and town hall meetings, and through online channels. Major civil rights groups, including the NAACP, the National Council of LaRaza (NCLR), and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), have been deeply involved in these efforts, along with labor unions, social service providers, consumer and small business groups, and advocates for veterans and seniors.”
“‘While things have improved it looks like some [lead generators] are, predictably, trying to get around the rules,’ said Gynnie Robnett, Campaign Director for Americans for Financial Reform… This is extremely common for the payday lending industry, whose business model is in some part predicated on skirting regulatory barriers to get high-cost loans into customers’ hands.”
“More than 400,000 comments asking for a rule on payday lending to be stronger and smarter have flooded in to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since a draft proposal on the rule was unveiled in June… On a press call today, People’s Action Institute and Americans for Financial Reform released Caught in the Debt Trap, a heart wrenching report that tells the real story about what business as usual means to thousands of borrowers around the country “