Washington, D.C. – Wells Fargo has racked up a record of numerous egregious abuses against its own customers that are detailed in a new scandal tracker released by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
The nation’s big-bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, should help broaden and extend a crackdown on financial institutions that repeatedly violate the law – notably Wells Fargo – with all the tools at its disposal. Comptroller Michael Hsu is speaking on the problem of “too big to manage” today. The speech comes about a month after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wells to pay $3.7 billion over widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts, and promised to work with other federal regulators to find durable solutions to its constant violations of the law.
Wells Fargo must complete a comprehensive review that identifies every single homeowner affected by this problem, and must adequately compensate them for the serious harm they have suffered as a result of losing their homes to wrongful foreclosure or paying for a more expensive modification.
“Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, used Thursday’s disclosures to argue against Trump administration efforts to roll back financial regulations: ‘Mounting evidence of just how pervasively and systematically Wells Fargo has abused consumers is a powerful argument for more robust regulation and enforcement to hold big banks accountable.’”
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.
The report includes facts about lobbying spending that hit $2 billion in the last election cycle, and continues unabated, Wall Street executives in the Trump administration and regulatory agencies, tax cut windfalls for the finance industry, and a deregulatory free-for-all. It also includes a case study of how Wells Fargo’s outrageous conduct somehow earned it the distinction of being the biggest winner from the Trump-Republican tax bill.
The notion that this administration is or will be tough on Wall Street doesn’t pass the laugh test, and that fact is evident in deeds, not tweets. Trump has put Goldman Sachs executives in the most senior positions in the government, and pushed for a giant tax cut for Wall Street.
Congress ought to be passing robust new consumer protections, not doing favors for banks. Annual industry earnings by banks set a new record in 2016, and community banks saw even faster growth than big banks. Over 95 percent of community banks turned a profit last year.
Americans for Financial Reform is stepping up its campaign in support of the consumer’s right to a day in court. A significant five-figure digital campaign targeting Maine, Alaska, Louisiana and Arizona will tell the stories of Hudson and Byrd, who were scammed by Wells Fargo – and left with no means of pursuing justice.