The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.
One day after a failed mega-merger attempt with Albertsons, Kroger launched plans to repurchase a massive $7.5 billion of their own stock, a clear effort to boost short-term stock prices and save CEO Rodney McMullen’s job by lining the pockets of its already wealthy shareholders.
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized new protections against overdraft fee abuses at the largest financial institutions, closing a decades-old loophole that allowed big banks to gouge their customers for an inexpensive service. The CFPB’s overdraft fee rule will reduce most overdraft fees from $35 per transaction down to $5, saving households in the United States $5 billion annually.
Today, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing with Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where lawmakers will hear testimony about the agency’s efforts to enforce and promote fairness, transparency, and competitiveness in the financial services that people rely on every day and hold accountable the Wall Street banks and financial predators that take advantage of vulnerable customers.
“If you mean to stick up for the little guy, and not stick it to the little guy, you don’t pick nominees from industry for agencies that should be protecting the public interest,” said Patrick Woodall, managing director for policy at Americans for Financial Reform.
The Stop Wall Street Looting Act of 2024 includes new measures to curb the growing power of private equity across the board and in key sectors of the economy like healthcare, and to penalize private equity firms and executives for their actions that harm a company and its workers even after they no longer control it. Lessons from the 2023 collapse of Steward Health Care, which stemmed from its 2010 buyout by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, shaped the new provisions.
Problems are brewing in a scheme that is bigger than the Australian economy and almost completely without federal oversight. It is called private credit — large scale lending, but not by banks — and has surged from less than $300 billion in loans in 2013 to over $2.1 trillion globally today. This unregulated market has become yet another tool for the private equity industry to pursue leveraged buyouts and leaves target companies on the hook to repay the new mountains of debt. If this large pool of unregulated loans go sour, the distress could spread into the broader financial system, including traditional banks, and pose systemic risk to the financial system.
As the focus on the American voter intensifies with the coming election, a new poll released today shows voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), financial regulation generally, and a variety of specific CFPB actions, including efforts to limit credit card late fees, reduce overdraft charges, and prohibit medical debt from appearing on credit reports.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a new standard from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) that clarifies the “General Responsibilities” of an auditor in conducting a public company audit. AFREF and Public Citizen submitted a comment to the PCAOB on the proposed standard.
The Federal Reserve’s 2024 stress-test results, which found that Capital One’s credit card portfolio is increasingly vulnerable to macroeconomic swings that could undermine its financial viability, highlights why federal regulators should block its proposed merger with Discover.