According to the Wall Street Journal, Senator Chris Dodd, Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, is thinking about abandoning the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to gain bipartisan support for banking reform.
The CFPA is the heart of the Obama reform plan, creating an independent agency to police banks on behalf of consumers, cracking down on fraud and abuses like the current practice of hiking credit card interest rates to obscene levels and imposing new bank fees to gouge consumers.
Republicans led by Sen. Richard Shelby, minority leader on the Banking Committee, oppose the agency. Shelby scorns it as part of the nanny state. And the banking lobby is spending big bucks opposing it.
But the reality is that the current regulators all focus on the soundness of the banks, not the concerns of consumers. They failed miserably in policing the widespread fraud that contributed to the housing bubble. And they have sat on their hands as banks have gouged consumers since the bubble burst.
A new agency is essential -- particularly to provide a cop on the beat to police the big banks that are buying up payday lenders and hiking credit card fees and rates.
To abandon this reform to gain "bipartisan support" for reforms is bad policy -- and bad politics. If Republicans want to stand with banks rather than consumers, let them. Bring the bill up, let Republicans filibuster it. Take that argument into the fall elections. It is hard to imagine anything -- other than job growth -- that would do more to bolster Democratic prospects.
Bad politics and bad policy. Perhaps President Obama might pick up the phone to the good Senator now rather than waiting until an unholy deal is struck.
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Sen. Dodd may scrap consumer protection agency-WSJ | Reuters
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And I really want Dr. Warren in government, she is extremely smart, articulate and she is on the consumer's side. We really do need her.
Case in point: California has about 26 million residents of voting age. Roughly 6 million of them returned Dianne Feinstein to office, with a margin of victory of about 1 million (if memory serves). Now take any issue - such as single-payer - that surveys tell us is favored by 2/3 of Americans, and imagine if only half of those in CA supporting it had called her and said, "Single payer or else." That would shake out to at least a couple million more than voted for her; no Senator can resist that kind of pressure, and no lobbyists can overcome it. The same principle holds true in every state, and in both houses.
But enough citizens need to put it into practice.
Of course going by the average IQ of their base, I'm not sure they'll even notice. But Independents will.
The great myth of the Democratic Party is that it's filled with some kind of progressive impulse. It isn't, and Dodd is the perfect poster boy for the myth.
The betrayal of the people who elected him remains breathtaking.
Bernanke and the Fed failed to regulate.
Cox and Schapiro at the SEC are two of the biggest fails ever in the history of the SEC.
FDIC is a major failure along with OTS and the OCC.
Treasury blew it under former Goldman CEO Paulson and Wall STreet water boy par excellence, Tim Geithner.
Ably assisted by wall street henchman Larry Summers, the wall street banking crew continues to own america irrespective of Democrat or Republican.
Bernanke must NOT be reappointed, beg Volcker to come back.
Geithner and his puppetmaster Summers must go asap.
Mary Schapiro? no brainer, out with her, she is a complete wall street shill.
It would be really neat, but it still wouldn't be enough. Nor, likely, would any consumer protection agency that would emerge.
The financial institutions are experts at exploiting loopholes- and creating them, through their power to shape legislation.
Ultimately, the only solution to the "corporations win-consumers lose" merry-go-round is a massive restructuring of campaign finance law...and that's gonna be a long row to hoe.
The Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2 appointed prosecutors and judges are the most reactionary in modern history. Years of power have made the keepers of the law a collective kangaroo court system.
Fight for this. Make last piece of important legislation the hallmark of your legacy. Now that you are beyond electoral politics, you can afford to be big, bold, and do the right thing.
The American people need this agency, not some add-on office in some other bureau. That's simply pretending to do something while really doing nothing.
Major campaign and lobbying reform needs to move to the front burner. It needs to happen in an election year to have a prayer. There is enough populist anger on all sides (the one thing most all agree with) to get it done.