Treasury Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Americans for Financial Reform

News Release: Opportunity Zones will worsen affordable housing crisis, displace Black and Brown residents

The Opportunity Zone tax break is likely to exacerbate the affordable housing crisis and displace residents of color and lower-income residents while rewarding rich real estate investors with a lucrative tax break, according to a new report by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Kansas City Tenants, and New York Communities for Change.

Report: Wall Street’s Big Opportunity: A Corporate Tax Break Masquerading as Community Development

The Opportunity Zone (O-Zone) tax break was created by the 2017 Republican tax cut legislation. It was promoted as a way to incentivize investment in economically disadvantaged areas but it is marred by poor design and flawed implementation so that it will most likely provide tax breaks for investments in already booming cities and gentrifying neighborhoods. The program incentivizes investments that aim to maximize returns in lower-income areas where residents are vulnerable to economic displacement pressures.

News Release: Congress Must Impose Conditions on Bailouts to Protect Workers

We write on behalf of the undersigned organizations to urge you to include conditions in the next COVID-19 response legislation that require all organizations that receive federal financial support to retain workers, preserve workers’ rights, and institute policies and procedures to protect workers from exposure to the virus.

Joint Letter: Fed and Treasury Should Freeze M&A Activity as Condition of Aid Money

The Fed must aggressively attempt to retain institutional credibility as a neutral actor in our economic order with regards to the distributional effects of its policies. It should not help finance a merger wave that leads to large-scale consolidation of companies which would have been healthy competitors but for temporary impacts of the current crisis.

Letter to Regulators: Fifty Organizations call for Transparency In Federal Reserve/Treasury Emergency Assistance

Note: On the afternoon this letter was sent the Federal Reserve announced it would be providing additional transparency in 13(3) facilities. See our comment linked here for earlier AFR Edcucation Fund communications with the Federal Reserve on this issue. Download a pdf of the letter

In The News: Who’s getting these hundreds of billions in government aid? For now, the public may be in the dark. (The Washington Post)

Critics also noted that while the central bank has to share some basic information about the loans, other details, such as how many employees the company has retained or the compensation for its chief executive, might never be shared publicly. “We should ask for the actual deal documents. Why wouldn’t you make those public?” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform.

us congress building - Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash

Letter to Congress: Oppose Kranbuhl Nomination at Treasury

His career is marred by a record of supporting dangerous deregulatory policies that have left our financial system ill equipped to face the economic challenges it is now confronted by. This includes efforts to weaken the Volcker rule that will further damage the resiliency of major financial institutions and a housing policy that treats market deregulation as the solution to our nation’s housing affordability crisis.

TOWS Brief: Wall Street Makes Bank on Trump

On the first anniversary of the Trump administration, the Take on Wall Street coalition catalogs the ways that Wall Street made bank on Trump in 2017.

AFR Statement: Treasury Report on Systemic Risk Designation of Large Non-Banks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Nov. 20, 2017 CONTACT Carter Dougherty carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org (202) 251-6700 Treasury Memorandum Weakens Systemic Risk Supervision On Friday the Treasury Department released a memorandum on the process used by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to designate large systemically significant non-bank financial institutions

AFR Report: Treasury Does Bidding of Big Banks in Dodd-Frank Report

In its rush to eviscerate the Dodd-Frank reforms, Treasury Department adopted over three-quarters of the ideas put forth by The Clearing House, an association of the biggest U.S. and international banks