Today, American Economic Liberties Project, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and Public Citizen sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) urging them to block the proposed Capital One-Discover merger under federal antitrust and banking statutes.
A new probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James, revealed in a court filing Wednesday, marks an important step in pushing back against the proposed merger of Capital One and Discover, one that should prompt other state antitrust officials to join efforts to block this harmful transaction.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) voted to propose a rule implementing an important statutory mandate to ban incentive-based executive compensation that encourages reckless risk-taking, but two other regulators – the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission – have yet to do the same. Congress tasked six agencies with promulgating this critical rule when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. But only four out of the six were part of today’s proposal — the FDIC, the OCC, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
The President has made it clear: it’s time to fight consolidation, not facilitate it. In reviewing lessons learned from this most recent banking crisis to better prevent the next one, the regulators must be full-throated and clear in their affirmation that robust regulation and competition, not consolidation, will lead to a healthier, safer, and more vibrant financial system. Banks must exist to serve the needs of the American people, not the other way around – and it is regulators’ critical task to ensure so.
AFREF, the Institute for Policy Studies, Global Economy Project, and Public Citizen led a letter with 22 additional signatories to the agencies tasked with implementing section 956 of Dodd-Frank. That section tasked six agencies with promulgating regulations to prevent incentive-based executive compensation that encourages “inappropriate risk” by May 2011. Almost 12 years later, we don’t have a final rule. The letter was sent to regulators ahead of congressional hearings that will examine recent bank failures.
The nation’s big-bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, should help broaden and extend a crackdown on financial institutions that repeatedly violate the law – notably Wells Fargo – with all the tools at its disposal. Comptroller Michael Hsu is speaking on the problem of “too big to manage” today. The speech comes about a month after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wells to pay $3.7 billion over widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts, and promised to work with other federal regulators to find durable solutions to its constant violations of the law.
AFREF and CRL led a letter calling for the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to reject a proposed merger between TD Bank and First Horizon Bank.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) and partners submitted comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on their proposed revision to the regulations that implement the Community Reinvestment
AFREF and 14 allies sent a letter urging the FDIC to stop permitting its supervised institutions to front for predatory lenders evading state interest rate limits.
AFREF joined a letter opposing the online lender Figure Bank’s application for a charter.