Finance Reform

"Today, the four biggest banks are 30 percent larger than they were five years ago. And the five largest banks now hold more than half of the total banking assets in the country," Warren said in a keynote address at a conference on the future of financial reform put on by the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank. "Who would have thought five years ago, after we witnessed firsthand the dangers of an overly concentrated financial system, that the 'too big to fail' problem would only have gotten worse?" 

-Senator Elizabeth Warren

From Jim Lardner at Americans for Financial Reform

Runaway executive pay, linked to short-term stock or profit gains, helped fuel the massive betting spree that gave us the financial and economic meltdown of 2008-09. In a modest response, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law requires companies to reveal more about their pay practices. Investors need this information, both to guard against risky bets by self-seeking executives and to evaluate a company's long-term soundness in light of evidence that outlandish pay at the top breeds cynicism and opportunism up and down the line.

Send a Message to the SEC: Carry Out the Law

Now, at long last, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken a first step toward requiring publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of their CEO's pay to their median employee's pay.

But Wall Street has raised a tremendous hue and cry about the supposed burden of compiling such data. And even now, the financial industry, along with other corporations and business groups in Washington, is working overtime to get the SEC to roll back a proposed rule that it took three years to issue.

Enough already. The pay gap between CEOs and the average American worker is outrageously high - 354-1 according to an end-of-2012 calculation by the AFL-CIO.  Five years have passed since the financial crisis, and three years since Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank law.

Join us in urging the SEC to stand by a strong proposal that rightly includes part-time and overseas workers. Tell the SEC to finalize this rule soon and follow up with action on other legally mandated steps to counter questionable corporate pay practices.

Tell the SEC to Stand Firm on CEO Pay Disclosure

Sincerely,
Jim Lardner
Americans for Financial Reform