AFR-CEPR Research: Small Donations Show Growing Power of Grassroots Vs. Wall Street

New members of Congress demonstrated substantially less reliance on money from the financial services industry than incumbents who won re-election in 2018. First-term Democratic members of the House raised, on average, 17 percent of the money for their campaign committees from small donors, compared with 9.4 percent by Democratic incumbents who won re-election.

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Letter To Regulators: Department of Labor Must Not Weaken The Conflict of Interest Rule

“On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform, we are writing to express our support for the Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) conflict of interest rule or “Fiduciary Duty” rule and our strong opposition to eliminating or weakening the rule. This rule strengthens protections for retirement savers by requiring individuals or entities which provide retirement investment advice […]

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Letter to Regulators: AFR Comments to CFTC on Improving Cross-Border Regulations of Derivatives

We strongly support using Consolidated Foreign Subsidiary (FCS) status as the basis for cross border enforcement rather than the more amorphous and subjective “guaranteed subsidiary” status. …We strongly disagree with the Commission’s proposal to exclude a wide range of transactions involving foreign branches and affiliates of U.S. swap dealers from external business conduct requirements.

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Letter to Regulators: AFR Provides Comments to Regulators on Controlling Wall Street bonuses

“Americans for Financial Reform (“AFR”) appreciates this opportunity to comment on the above referenced Proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (the “Proposal”) issued by the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FHFA, NCUA, OCC, and SEC (the “Agencies”)… Section 956 is a particularly significant and vital element of the Dodd-Frank Act. There is widespread agreement among students of the 2008 financial crisis that the design of bonus pay was a central contributor to the crisis. “

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Letter to Regulators: AFR Calls on Department of Labor to Protect Retirement Investors

“This is a huge problem – one that, over time, can easily add up to a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement savings. Under the current rules, some of the financial professionals offering retirement investment advice are legally bound to look out for the best interests of their clients; but other professionals, while perceived as having such a duty and clearly benefiting from the perception, are free to put their own interests first, even if that means saddling their clients with needlessly high fees or inappropriate risks.”

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