New York, NY - With the House of Representatives poised to vote on H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, Amy Traub, Associate Director, Policy and Research at Demos, issued the following statement:
July 21, 2017 (New York, NY) – In honor of the sixth anniversary of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research, issued the following statement.
Climate change poses an existential challenge to the planet. But the effects of climate change have fallen disproportionately on communities of color and working families. And the reality is that climate change has been accelerated by a coalition of corporations, donors, and policymakers who have adopted a willful blindness toward these dangers to our communities and our planet.
On Friday, February 15, Lew Daly, Senior Policy Analyst at Demos, testified in support of New York State’s Climate and Community Protection Act. Following is Daly’s statement on the bill:
New York State’s Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) is a bold and necessary climate action policy for the people of New York. It will establish the strongest mandate for economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the country, requiring a 50 percent reduction by 2030 and set a timeline for achieving a 100 percent renewable energy economy by 2050.
How financial market practices not only risk catastrophic systemic failure like 2008, they constitute a massive extraction of value from the real economy by the financial sector.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has, ironically, found that exploiting children turns a profit. It has been doing so since its creation in 1984 under Ronald Reagan, who created the quasi-governmental agency. It enjoys liberal funding from the Department of Justice and a level of privacy other non-profits don’t have.
The horrifying subject of missing children often obscures questions of budget allocation, employee compensation, and the accuracy of statements the organization releases.
In the absence of federal leadership, states are taking the lead in the fight against climate change. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley recently released an ambitious climate change plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, generate $1.6 billion in economic benefits, and support more than 37,000 jobs. The plan has over 150 initiatives that touch on nearly every aspect of the economy from transportation to agriculture to zero waste.
The huge trading losses suffered by JP Morgan last year—and the cover-up of those losses—stand as just one example of that giant bank's long record of excess, criminality, and deception.
And when you think of who should be held accountable for the London Whale fiasco, one name comes to mind. It's a name that should be on the lips of every regulator and ordinary citizen who wants justice for years of financial malfeasance by JP Morgan.
The post-recession party line at the American Bankers Association (ABA) is something like, “Hey Jane/Joe Briefcase. We're just as mad at gosh darn Wall Street as anyone. But only some bankers are evil. A lot of us are honest and work hard, just like you.” Maybe. But this isn’t a reason to lose track of ABA’s political agenda and who pays to set it: Wall Street, coincidentally.
On Friday, Paul Krugman dealt with financial market price bubbles, focusing specifically on emerging markets. He takes on the issue of bubble creation as a result of aggressive Fed loose money policy of the recent past. He correctly points out that the emerging markets situation is really one of a series of bubbles (commercial real estate, Asian securities, dot-com, residential real estate), referred to by George Soros as a “super bubble,” that has roiled through the economy since the 1980s.
Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."
Chief of Programs at Demos, Angela Hanks on Black employment in this jobs report, wage growth, and the Fed rate hike - what damage that could do to the economy.
The standard rap against regulation is that government uses a meat cleaver to clean up problems in the private sector that are better tackled with more nuance.
Yet regulation—or the threat of it—often serves to spur smart self-regulation that wouldn't otherwise occur. You want to see a scalpel at work? Wave around a meat cleaver.
A case in point is how banks are getting more serious about addressing consumer complaints now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has created a database of complaints about banks and other financial institutions.
