The AFR Ed Fund and allied organizations submitted a comment to banking regulators highlighting concerns that digital banking activities may discriminate by race or otherwise threaten our civil rights.
Because Faceboook’s active-user network alone represents more than a third of the global population, its ambitions raise the spectre of systemic risk not only in the United States, but across jurisdictional lines. Indeed, a global stablecoin system like the Libra project could pose especially substantial risks to certain developing economies, where Libra Coins could functionally replace the local currency.
CFPB finalizes policy that gives companies a private channel to seek approvals of untested new products and a promise that the CFPB will not take action for consumer protection law violations
The AFR Education Fund sent a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee concerning Facebook’s proposal for the Libra digital token and payment system. The statement describes ways in which Facebook is attempting to create an unregulated financial product of potentially global scale and the dangers this would pose to the users of the token and the broader financial system.
The CFPB is exceeding its authority under the law that created the agency and would set a dangerous precedent with its “disclosure sandbox” policy, its label for granting companies exemptions from disclosure rules. The CFPB would allow firms to obfuscate or eliminate important information in the name of “financial innovation,” a label often applied to defend practices in mortgage lending that led to the 2008 crisis.