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April 27, 2021
The Longer Trump’s Acting Comptroller Stays, The More Damage He’ll Do
Under Otting and Brooks’ leadership, the OCC rolled out rules contrary to its responsibility to maintain a federal banking system that is safe against systemic risks and provides aid to all customers. Now they’re all out of power — but Acting Comptroller, Blake Paulson, whose ascent was ensured by Brooks and Mnuchin, has demonstrated no desire to change course from the path set by Trump’s lackeys. That is why Biden needs to act quickly and appoint a Comptroller who recognizes the dangerous precedent set by the Trump administration.

April 22, 2021
Delaware Connections Run Deep As DuPont Family's Darla Pomeroy Heads To Treasury
Darla Pomeroy, who is married to an heir to the DuPont family fortune, was just named Senior Advisor to the Office of Domestic Finance at the US Treasury. While her record does not show any familiarity with financial regulatory policy, it reveals instead a history of a powerful corporation highly influential in Delaware placing a close ally in the administration.

April 22, 2021
Wall Street Lawyer Leading Wall Street Oversight Unsettles Allies Of Gensler
“Oh has chosen to spend over 20 years reinforcing a corrupt status quo in corporate America, in which the largest companies systematically evade democratic accountability. No one so comfortable with the breakdown in the rule of law over corporate America should be entrusted with responsibility for implementing long-overdue accountability on Wall Street.”

April 19, 2021
In Latest Disappointment From Yellen, John Morton Is Treasury's New Climate Counselor
The U.S. Treasury Department announced today that John Morton would be appointed as its first Climate “Counselor,” tasked with organizing financial-related climate work across the executive branch’s financial regulators.

April 02, 2021 | The American Prospect
Janet Yellen's Blind Spot On Regulation
With so many competing priorities, it’s justifiable that Yellen has not given her full attention to every single crisis under her purview. But she can no longer dodge her other big duty: financial policy and Wall Street regulation.

March 18, 2021 | The American Prospect
John Kerry Must Choose: Wall Street Or The Planet
We have every reason to believe Kerry genuinely wants to save the Earth from climate devastation. His problem is that there is no neoliberal path to doing so.

March 16, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Manny Alvarez
Alvarez only re-entered the regulatory world after six years at Affirm, a fintech e-lender that offers loans up to 30 percent APR under sometimes confusing terms at the point of sale, so consumers rarely have the opportunity to shop around or read the fine print for an informed decision.

March 16, 2021
FSOC 101: How Each Member Of The Financial Stability Oversight Council Can Fight Climate Change
Title 1 of the Dodd-Frank Act Title established the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) just over a decade ago. Prior to its arrival, there was no cross-agency government body tasked with protecting the financial system from systemic risks. FSOC was created to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis and to be a safeguard against financial practices with the potential to wreak global havoc.

March 16, 2021
A Slam Dunk Climate Opportunity For Biden: Five Open Seats On The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
President Biden is being presented with a straightforward, simple opportunity to make good on his promise to take a whole-of-government approach to fighting climate change. Appointing climate leaders who will take urgent climate action even if their job descriptions do not explicitly mention the environment is one of the easiest and most important ways Biden can display integrity.

March 10, 2021 | The American Prospect
Will Financial Regulators Act On Climate?
Lael Brainard and Janet Yellen have been talking the talk about climate risk, but not translating that into meaningful action. Our Dorothy Slater takes a closer look at what strong climate action from financial regulators would look like.

March 02, 2021
A Market-Driven Response to the Climate Crisis Means a Non-Response
Wall Street executives are digging in their heels against the prospect of divesting from fossil fuel investments. At a February event, they peddled the extremely dangerous and false theory that modern society can “rely on the power of markets” to decarbonize our climate-destroying economy.

February 26, 2021
Mark Zandi: The Worst Potential FHFA Regulator You’ve Never Heard Of
Almost every homeowner and most of the American mortgage-backed securities financial system is subject to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) regulation. It oversees and guarantees the vast majority of mortgages bought and sold in the United States. The FHFA does this through quasi-public agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from local banks that they bundle, chop up, and sell to investors. This arrangement ideally allows local banks to provide more and cheaper loans to potential homeowners by letting them sell their mortgage liabilities to the government, and gives investors access to relatively stable investment returns.

February 17, 2021
The Industry Agenda: Fossil Fuel
The fossil fuel industry is one of the most notoriously profit-hungry and planet-destroying sets of corporations to exist today. The “fossil fuel industry” includes oil, gas, (yes, even the “natural” kind), and coal companies, as well as subsidiary companies involved in the extraction processes for these materials: land and off-shore drilling, fracking, and underground and surface mining.

February 16, 2021
How A Little-Known Treasury Position Could Move Mountains For Climate Action
President Biden has promised to take a “whole-of-government” approach to tackling the climate crisis, and so far his appointees appear to be following suit. The National Climate Task Force met for the first time in a crowded zoom room last week, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and International Climate Envoy John Kerry met earlier this month to discuss their “climate finance plan” to shift capital towards investments in line with a low-carbon economy.

February 11, 2021 | The American Prospect
The Trump Holdovers Biden Still Needs to Fire
Throughout several decades in the Senate, Joe Biden earned a reputation as an institutionalist. Extraordinary circumstances, however, are pushing the new president to cast aside many of his beloved norms when they fail to account for these exceptional times. In just a few short weeks, Biden has removed officials whose predecessors had never before been fired. And faced with predictable Republican obstruction on his signature pandemic response bill, he’s eschewed endless waiting for compromise in favor of budget reconciliation.