(I attended this and she did a great job. We need more like her in the Obama administration! gd)
Elizabeth Warren, special assistant to President Obama, said the fine print in some financial documents is "like shrubbery that muggers can hide in," but she hopes a newly formed federal agency will make the industry more consumer-friendly.
"Consumers ought to be able to compare three or four credit cards, three or four mortgages," she said.
Warren, who also serves as special adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is a law professor at Harvard University, delivered the annual Chellgren Lecture at the University of Kentucky on Monday night.
In an address titled "Debt, Credit and the Middle Class," Warren pointed to data indicating that, over more than three decades, the percentage of disposable income Americans put toward savings has decreased, while their debt has increased. Home values have grown, but so has mortgage debt, and home equity as a share of home value has declined.
Read more:
http://www.kentucky.com/2011/04/19/1712662/obama-adviser-speaks-at-university.html#ixzz1JyCuLPYG