Americans for Financial Reform submitted today a statement for the record for the joint House Financial Services/Agriculture Committees’ subcommittee hearing on stablecoins entitled, “Putting the ‘Stable’ in ‘Stablecoins:’ How Legislation Will Help Stablecoins Achieve Their Promise.”
AFREF led a letter urging the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) as the coordinating body for several regulatory agencies to imminently take action against the various misdeeds that may be conducted by the issuers of stablecoins. The letter explains that such urgency cannot be overstated given how quickly the market continues to grow, posing greater threats to the broader financial system.
AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst Renita Marcellin hosted a conversation with Professor Art Wilmarth, author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act. Professor Wilmarth discussed why structural protections, such as a modern Glass-Steagall Act and the separation between banking and commerce, are necessary in the banking system. They also examined how the erasure of these laws have led to many of the challenges we are currently facing in the financial system including ILCs/special purpose charters, the rise of Fintech firms, and stablecoins and highlighted the urgency of revisiting laws on structural separations in the banking system.
The Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund views the current state of the stablecoin market as a danger to consumers and to financial stability, and we are disappointed that the President’s Working Group (PWG) has focused on Congressional action as the central path for responding to these challenges.