Some of Washington’s most powerful trade associations and big corporations are pushing to get an exemption from derivatives regulations mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial law—and House Republicans are planning to introduce legislation to do just that.
Under the umbrella of an ad hoc coalition, known as the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users, which is run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Business Roundtable, among others, the coalition first weighed in during the debate over the financial law.
Since the law’s passage, the coalition has also been presenting its case with ...
Continue readingData lacking on overdraft fees
More than six months after new federal rules went into effect that prohibit banks from charging consumers overdraft fees unless they “opt in” to such an arrangement, government data are lacking on how this has changed banks’ bottom lines.
“This is the most expensive form of credit, and consumers most likely to use it are the most vulnerable. You’d think regulators would want to know exactly how much revenue banks are taking in,” says Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services with the Consumer Federation of America.
The federal regulations came after years of controversy over banks’ practice of ...
Continue readingGeithner meets with Obama campaign fundraiser
Penny Pritzker, who served as President Obama’s finance chair during his 2008 campaign and whose name was mentioned as a possible U.S. Commerce Secretary, met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and several other top government heavyweights to discuss Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), according to meeting logs released by the agency this week.
In 2008, Pritzker who has a stake in several real estate and hotel businesses across the country, came under scrutiny for her role in a failed bank that made subprime loans in the leadup to the financial crisis. Pritzker said at the time that the bank ...
Continue readingChamber of Commerce meets with CFTC chairman
Yesterday a lobbyist and executives representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has criticized the whistleblower provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial law, met with Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to discuss the issue.
Under the new law, the CFTC is given the authority to award whistleblowers 10 to 30 percent of the amount recovered when information they provide leads to an enforcement action yielding sanctions of $1 million or more. They can also file for relief if they face retaliation for their disclosures.
"Put simply, the proposed rule creates a set of ...
Continue readingKoch lobbied on consumer protection database recently defunded in the House
In mid-February, freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, whose top campaign donor is Koch Industries, proposed a successful amendment in an appropriations bill to defund a new public product safety database recently soft-launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Two years ago, when the bill was being debated, Koch lobbied on this specific issue, citing the "consumer reporting database provision" in legislation that passed that year.
In addition, the congressman's chief of staff, Mark Chenoweth, worked formerly both for Koch Industries and as chief legal counsel for Anne Northup, a Republican CPSC commissioner who has opposed the new database ...
Continue readingThe Politics of Mother’s Milk
You may have heard the old adage that “money is the mother’s milk of politics,” but money also has a... View Article
Continue readingToy industry wants to put kibosh consumer database
The toy industry is pushing to weaken the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in part by defunding a new database scheduled to launch next month that would allow consumers to go online and report an incident with a product they think is unsafe, reports the New York Times.
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R., Kansas, attached an amendment (H.Amdt.159) to the House appropriations bill last week that would prohibit any funds be used for the database.
“I’m an engineer. I love data. But I know what people put online...I think this is a plaintiff’s bar dream," Pompeo ...
Continue readingTop financial regulators meets with industry leaders, lobbyists
Elizabeth Warren, who has been charged with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reported more meetings with individuals outside the government in December than any other Treasury official working on implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial law.
Warren, who also played an advisory role to the bank bailout oversight committee, reported 15 such meetings with a total of 204 different individuals representing a wide range of interests, from Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, to representatives of financial trade associations, to those from a long list of consumer groups, such as Consumer Federation of America and the Center ...
Continue readingOverlooked part of Dodd-Frank law could keep information from the public
Buried in the massive Dodd-Frank financial law is a section that could prevent the public from obtaining records the government collects as part of its new oversight of hedge funds and other private funds managed by investment advisers.
Section 404 remained unchanged when Congress last fall repealed another part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act--section 929I--that had provided a massive exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Congress approved that repeal under tremendous pressure after Fox Business News reported that the SEC had cited the new ...
Continue readingFed says mortgage disclosure rules up to new consumer agency
Improving mortgage disclosures for consumers will have to wait until July when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) comes into business, the Federal Reserve Board announced yesterday.
In the face of criticism that homeowners didn't always understand the terms of mortgages they took out during the housing boom, last fall the Fed proposed enhancing disclosures to consumers under the Truth in Lending Act. The new rules would have changed disclosures for reverse mortgages, as well as restricted certain advertising and sales practices for them, as well as proposing new disclosure rules for loan modifications. The agency received more than ...
Continue reading
59063
