Event: Ranking Member Waters, Professor Anat Admati and Professor Jeremy Kress debunked myths about bank capital at Admati’s book event

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 […]

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Event: Private Equity’s Attacks on Basic Human Needs

Wall Street private equity firms have grown from $1 trillion in 2008 to nearly $4.5 trillion today, exerting enormous influence in critical sectors of the economy. Private equity landlords have led the way in corporate landlords displacing tenants by neglecting properties while raising fees and rents. Private equity ownership in healthcare has led to the […]

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Event: Industry legal challenges to the SEC private funds disclosure rule: What’s at stake

This webinar examines the widespread harm that all businesses and investors would suddenly face if the Securities and Exchange Commission’s broadly accepted requirements for truthful disclosures and rules protecting investors suddenly come into question if the courts serve the SEC with an adverse ruling on a number of ongoing legal cases. In particular, the webinar […]

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Event: Reparations: How to Fund Them & Avoid a Wall Street Takeover

Reparations: How to Fund Them & Avoid a Wall Street Takeover is a fireside chat with Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington University Law) and Alvin Velazquez (SEIU) moderated by Ericka Taylor (Take On Wall Street and Americans for Financial Reform). Bearer-Friend authored a novel proposal for how to pay for reparations. His approach proposes capitalizing a multi-trillion dollar reparations fund with corporate equity in lieu of cash payments.

Join us as Taylor lays out the case for reparations and the current landscape, then learn more about Bearer-Friend’s proposal, followed by Velazquez sharing lessons learned from labor unions’ pension funds experience. Their conversation will then center around how to actually design the governance of the proposed reparations fund to maximize its benefits to its intended beneficiaries and prevent the fund from being co-opted by the financial industry to further its own interests.

The live webinar took place on Thursday, March 7th, 2024

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Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Support of Proposals to Reduce Systemic Risk

View or download a PDF of the letters here: AFREF submitted comments supporting proposals from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which would strengthen and expand applicability of resolution plan rules and guidance and require more large banks (in the Fed’s large bank tailoring […]

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Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Support of Revisions to OMB Guidance for Grants and Agreements

View or download a PDF of the letter here. The Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF), the Institute for Policy Studies, Jobs to Move America, Communications Workers of America, United for Respect, and Take on Wall Street wrote a comment letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to recommend it be made explicit – […]

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Letters to Congress: AFR Letter for the Record in Support of Basel III Endgame Proposal

View or download a PDF of the letter here. In advance of the Senate and House hearings on the oversight of prudential regulators this week, AFR filed a statement for the record advocating for the Fed, the OCC and the FDIC to finalize key rulemakings, The post Letters to Congress: AFR Letter for the Record […]

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Letters to Congress: AFR Letter for the Record in Opposition to a House Ways & Means Committee Anti-ESG Hearing

AFR wrote in opposition to the premise of the House Ways and Means Committee hearing titled “Ensuring what ‘Woke’ Doesn’t Leave Americans Broke: Protecting Seniors and Savers from ESG Activism.” This hearing is part of a much broader, unpopular campaign against common sense investment practices that seeks to force financial actors to ignore a slew […]

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NEWS RELEASE: Advocates for Workers and Investors Call on Labor Department to Withdraw Policy that Lets Private Equity Loot Retirement Plans

Nineteen organizations and individuals that advocate on behalf of consumers, workers, investors and retirees have called on the Department of Labor to withdraw its controversial policy statement opening the door to private equity investments in 401(k) plans.

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