Last week, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team access to all of the federal government payments data. Musk’s team of tech bros are currently upending and disrupting the entire federal government without clear statutory authority or congressional approval.
AFREF submitted a comment regarding a request for information on uses, opportunities, and risks of artificial intelligence in the financial services sector. The comment notes that while artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and generative models, could potentially transform the financial services industry, insufficiently robust AI regulatory oversight and supervision can harm consumers by amplifying discriminatory patterns in credit markets, increasing consumer costs, and creating barriers to accessible credit. To address these harms, federal regulators should pursue a rights-based and not solely a risk-based approach.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a critical interagency effort that aims to protect consumers from solar fraud and scams, clamp down on bad actors and practices in the industry, promote safe green lending that can benefit consumers and responsible solar businesses, and mitigate climate change. This move comes as more consumers are being marketed and offered loans and leases for green products and projects, due in part to new federal financial incentives that make them more affordable
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 joined two letters – one to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Treasury, and one to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – urging the Biden-Harris Administration to do more to relieve medical debt for tens of millions of people. The letters, signed by more than 60 organizations, include specific executive actions the administration can take to address medical debt.
AFREF sent a letter to the Treasury Department on how to increase transparency in the U.S. Treasury market.
AFR joined a letter to Treasury expressing concern that their practice of reducing or eliminating payments made in tax refunds to low-income families undermines the social safety net and threatens to push millions of children into poverty.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen should prioritize repealing the 2019 Trump-era guidance that prevents federal regulators from properly policing institutions whose collapse would imperil the financial system.
AFREF and 30 allies sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging her to prioritize restoring FSOC’s ability to fully execute its authority under Dodd-Frank by repealing the SIFI 2019 guidance; developing a data strategy for OFR; and using the statutory authority given in Title I of Dodd-Frank to apply a racial equity lens when designating a non-bank financial company as a SIFI.
AFR joined NCLC, CRL, NCRC, and Open Markets in sending a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen opposing a bank charter for stablecoin issuers that would give them preemption rights without the full obligations and oversight required for insured depository banks.