We stand in solidarity with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the millions of Black people subject to racial oppression, violence, and murder at the hands of the police and of white supremacists.
AFREF and 18 additional signatories wrote to the SEC in support of bringing much-needed disclosures to the vast market of ESG-designated products and services. The letter urges the SEC to finalize the rule titled “Enhanced Disclosures by Certain Investment Advisers and Investment Companies about Environmental, Social, and Governance Investment Practices” as soon as possible and recommends changes to the way the proposed rule addresses disclosure of metrics by ESG-Focused Funds. These changes would improve the rule by generating disclosures that better reflect ESG-Focused Funds’ varied strategies and priority metrics while alleviating concerns expressed by some commenters.
In 2020, amid a global reckoning for racial justice, the largest Wall Street banks make public pledges to better serve communities of color. But their recent lawsuit to overturn the enforcement of the updated 1977 Community Reinvestment Act starkly undermines the principles they claim to champion.
Americans for Financial Reform, together with Better Markets, welcomed Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at the Stanford School of Business, together with esteemed panelist, Assistant Professor of Business Law at Michigan Ross, Jeremy Kress, to discuss the recent update to Anat’s co-authored book, The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It, which debunks myths about bank capital.
AFR joins a sign-on letter urging the Biden Administration to end billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and financial institutions. These wasteful overpayments are causing significant challenges for Medicare’s financial sustainability. The fixes that CMS can and should undertake will help level the playing field between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage, promote health equity and bring down Part B premiums for everyone with Medicare.
Wall Street private equity firms have experienced exponential growth, accumulating substantial influence across critical sectors of the economy. From corporate landlords displacing tenants to healthcare facilities suffering under private equity ownership, the impact is far-reaching.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, 142 consumer, civil rights, military, legal services, and community groups submitted comments in strong support of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposed rule governing the overdraft lending practices of the largest financial institutions. [The National Consumer Law Center also submitted a longer, more detailed set of comments, which will be available here.]
Today, Sam Bankman Fried – known as SBF, the founder of crypto firm FTX; the once exalted face of the crypto boom, and now the poster child for crypto scandals – was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison, after being found guilty of seven counts of fraud in a jury trial last year. The presiding judge found SBF, in addition to his other charges, had committed perjury and witness tampering during his trial as well.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A coalition of 30 community, consumer, civil rights, and public interest groups has called on federal bank and antitrust regulators to follow several critical procedural safeguards that will help ensure proper review of the proposed takeover of Discover by Capital One. The coalition includes Americans for Financial Reform, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the American Economic Liberties Project and Public Citizen.
Carter Dougherty, the communications director at Americans for Financial Reform (and a former reporter for The Times) … “With executive compensation linked to bank share prices, you realize the incredibly self-interested case that the bank lobby makes against more equity/capital: it lowers banker compensation.”
The $35 billion takeover bid would vault Capital One into 6th place among the biggest U.S. banks and create the largest U.S. credit card lender, ahead of current leader JPMorgan Chase. This new company could raise prices for cardholders, especially lower-income consumers and Black and Latine households and give Capital One the power to jack up debit card fees on merchants. In short, it would reinforce the megabank monopoly power that is already a serious problem in the American economy. The Biden administration must stand up for consumers, communities, and small businesses and block the Capital One-Discover merger.
