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Reining in Wall Street

STANDING UP AGAINST THE BIG BANKS AND WALL STREET—For more than 20 years, Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski has helped us stand up against big banks and credit card companies.

OUR FISCAL FUTURE

For years, federal bank regulators ignored numerous warnings of increasingly predatory mortgage practices, credit card tricks, and unfair overdraft policies used by the big Wall Street banks. They also ignored warnings of risky securities being packaged and sold to investors. In the wake of the resulting financial crisis, U.S. PIRG fought to pass the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Since winning federal Wall Street reform, we’ve been working to defend those reforms from the industry’s attempts to defang, defund or delay them — in particular the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the centerpiece of the law.

We’re working to:

  • Put consumers and taxpayers before big banks: Check irresponsible financial practices with new rules and stronger, independent enforcement by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
     
  • Cover all players and transactions: Rein in hedge funds and reckless investments that escaped regulations and traded without oversight on “shadow markets.” 
     
  • Control corporations that are “too big to fail”: Banks shouldn’t be able to freely gamble with taxpayer money covering their bets. We must rein in institutions whose risky investments threaten the larger economy.

In short, we’re fighting for a financial regulatory system that guarantees that consumers and taxpayers are protected from the predatory practices at the heart of this problem. And we need to provide consumers a seat at the table when it comes to oversight of the nation’s financial system.

Issue updates

Blog Post | Financial Reform

Bank lobby launches dark money group to kill reform and other Friday Follies | Ed Mierzwinski

(UPDATED) The American Bankers Association's latest effort to kill financial reform is to raise millions of dollars through a new dark money group (like a secret SuperPAC) disguised as a social welfare organization but designed to elect Senators who agree with their Bizarro-World narrative that the financial collapse of 2008 was not their fault.  Meanwhile, read more Friday Financial Follies, because in Washington, we don't have to make this stuff up.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

SEC mostly ignores us, proposal weakens investor protections | Ed Mierzwinski

Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a proposed rule implementing the controversial JOBS Act that fails to protect small investors from a likely onslaught of sales pitches online and on the phone -- including from private equity and hedge funds. Positively, it's only a proposed rule, at least nominally subject to amendment, not an interim final rule.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

More credit card banks quit evil ways | Ed Mierzwinski

In July, the CFPB slammed Capital One for tricking consumers into buying over-priced, under-performing credit monitoring and debt-cancellation subscription products. More good news: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bank of America has stopped selling debt cancellation products and that Citibank is in some sort of timeout.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

Wall St. Computers Run Amok and More Friday Financial Follies | Ed Mierzwinski

Will the blowback from Wednesday's Wall Street high-speed trading crash caused by computers running amok revitalize efforts to enact a small tax on stock transactions? Meanwhile, here are the rest of the week's financial follies, finishing with a Funk #49.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

Friday's Financial and other Congressional Follies | Ed Mierzwinski

Yesterday the U.S. House passed a bill stopping all regulations designed to promote the economy, preserve the environment or protect health, safety and pocketbooks. Meanwhile,  Citibank's Sandy Weill, the man who in 1999 convinced Congress to destroy the 1932 Glass-Steagall financial protections, has changed his mind.

> Keep Reading

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

CFPB to announce mortgage servicing rules and other consumer news of the week | Ed Mierzwinski

(Update: phottos added.) Today, U.S. PIRG will be an invited guest as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes new mortgage servicing rules to prevent, among other things, a recurrence of the robo-signing scandal. Among the other important news items of the week, in case you missed it, Ohio has made it harder for aggrieved consumers to obtain redress when ripped off.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

Corporate crime update: Phone companies stop cramming, but banks still run amok | Ed Mierzwinski

The industry trade paper American Banker is reporting  that "Bank of America Sold Card Debts to Collectors Despite Faulty Records" in 2009 and 2010. Good to know. It confirms previous consumer group studies that had documented that big banks were forcing consumers to arbitrate and pay "debts" that may not have been owed (some were due to identity theft or sloppy records). However, in the latest fallout from a U.S. Senate Commerce committee investigation of unauthorized third-party billing on phone bills (cramming), Chairman Jay Rockefeller has announced that ATT has joined other big telcos in finally promising to drop the tawdry practice of "cramming," which is a technical term meaning "making big bucks by allowing fly-by-night firms selling useless junky products consumers don't want and didn't buy to use phone bills as cash registers."

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

FTC releases major report recommending privacy reforms | Ed Mierzwinski

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today released a major report on consumer privacy. From FTC -- "In the report, “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers,” the FTC also recommends that Congress consider enacting general privacy legislation, data security and breach notification legislation, and data broker legislation."

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

Investor rights on chopping block in U.S. Senate (updated) | Ed Mierzwinski

(See updates (click Keep Reading): Today, the U.S. Senate will consider the House-passed "JOBS" Act, which weakens investor protections -- many passed after the Internet bubble burst and Enron's follow-on bankruptcy destroyed jobs and retirement savings. Its supporters claim the bill to make it easier for small companies to navigate SEC rules and  thereby promote small company growth (which theoretically creates, you guessed it, jobs), has already been thoroughly vetted. Yet, the bill is opposed by some of the Senate's most thoughtful investor champions and opposed by U.S. PIRG and numerous consumer and investor organizations. We support a substitute to be offered by Senators Jack Reed (RI), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Carl Levin (MI) because it protects investors. But if the substitute fails to get 60 votes, the JOBS Act will be non-amendable under an ill-advised special fast-track system set up to speed it through.

> Keep Reading
Blog Post | Financial Reform

Senate Wants to Pass Dangerous Just Open Bucket Shops Act (so-called Jobs Act) | Ed Mierzwinski

You may not remember any pre-2008 scandals -- dot.com bubble?; Enron scandal? --  since they are so yesterday's news. Don't worry. The House and Senate don't remember, either. If the Senate has its way with quick passage of the misnamed already-House-passed Jobs Act, -- better named by the New York Times columnist Gail Collins as the "Just Open Bucket Shops Act" -- conflicted analysts will make stuff up again, government watchdogs like the SEC and PCAOB will be chained, and small and novice investors will be looking at "crowd-funded websites" from good guys and bad guys, too, including often-fraudulent Chinese IPOs. Things are so bad that the Senate's leading investor champions aren't even sure they can get enough votes to modify the proposal -- let alone block it -- even with a compromise alternative (letter from PIRG-backed AFR/CFA). Only in Washington.

> Keep Reading

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