Today, Americans for Financial Reform sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary Geithner requesting that they “urge the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to examine a small levy on financial speculation as a revenue-raising measure.”
“Irresponsible deregulation of the financial industry – and the conduct it made possible – was a root cause of the financial crisis that has cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings. The ‘Regulatory Accountability Act’ would further stack the deck towards Wall Street special interests, and make it impossible to put in place the common sense rules we need to demand transparency and accountability in financial markets, and prevent the financial industry from repeating the extraordinarily reckless practices for which most of us are paying so high a price.”
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – October 15, 2011 – October 20, 2011.
“Wall Street driven excessive speculation in commodities market has increased prices – and price volatility – for everyday commodities including oil and food. It is costing US consumers hundreds of billions of dollars, driving up costs and uncertainty for producers, holding back economic recovery, and causing increased hunger and privation in the poorest parts of the world.”
Click here to view this week’s highlights and lowlights in Wall Street Reform – October 8, 2011 – October 14, 2011.
The oil price spike of the past year, which saw gasoline prices increase by over a dollar from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011, will drive household expenditures on gasoline to a record average of $2900 this year. Crude oil is about $30 higher than costs or historic trends justify, generating needlessly high prices for petroleum products that will drain about $200 billion out of the economy.
Today’s House Agriculture committee hearing is a loophole festival for the big swaps dealers. The Committee is considering seven different pieces of legislation. Almost every one of them would carve a significant loophole in the new derivatives protections created by the Dodd Frank Act.
“The Volcker Rule, with its clear ban on both proprietary trading and conflicts of interest, is one of the short list of places where the Dodd-Frank Act imposes an outright ban on Wall Street practices central to the financial crisis. Unfortunately, the proposal issued today falls well short of what the Volcker Rule could and should achieve. It is too weighted toward preserving bank freedom of action, rather than creating the changes in bank practice and culture required by the statute,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. “We strongly urge major improvements in the final rule. The serious and widespread economic pain caused by the failures of our financial system, and the growing expressions of public outrage – with more and more people taking to the streets –help make it clear how important it is to get this right,” she added.
Ben Protess (DealBook/NYT)
October 6, 2011
‘We call on all senators to stand up for families and confirm Richard Cordray as C.F.P.B. director,’ said Lisa Donner, head of Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. ‘Will you implement the law and make sure the C.F.P.B. can do its job helping people defend themselves from loan sharks big and small? Or will you block consumer protection and instead protect wrongdoing by companies that caused the financial crisis?’
Darius Tahir (The New Republic)
October 6, 2011
As Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform told me, all sorts of people rely on predictable commodity markets for their business: gas stations, businesses that supply heating oil, enterprises that order food in bulk such as confectioners, and so on. Higher volatility often ends up being passed on to businesses as a higher cost on their balance sheet, with predictable consequences