Consumer Bureau Launches in Shark-Infested Waters

[marmar]

July 23rd, 2011 10:59 AM
Consumer Bureau Launches in Shark-Infested Waters

By Mary Bottari


The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) throws open its doors to consumers this week, officially starting its mission to safeguard Americans from overly complex financial products and malignant banking practices. The bureau is the culmination of a national grassroots effort to hold the big banks accountable for the 2008 economic collapse caused by Wall Street’s insatiable appetite for dangerous mortgage products. Millions of Americans signed petitions to create the bureau and new polling shows that 74% of Americans think it is a terrific idea.

But the CFPB launches in perilous waters. On the day the bureau opened its doors, the House of Representatives took up H.R. 1315 the “Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act” – a name that would make George Orwell blush. This bill, authored by neophyte Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin (the man who complains about his $174,000 Congressional salary at town hall meetings), is one of a dozen bills that have been introduced by Republicans eager for Wall Street campaign contributions to defund, dismantle, and destroy the new bureau.

Why is this little agency so dangerous?

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street and the financial services lobby spent an eye-popping $1,400,000,000 between 2008 and 2010 to kill financial reform. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a whole unit dedicated to killing it. This year, the those same forces spent $156 million on lobbying in the first quarter. The big banks are fighting the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill with a stable of willing Congressmen and an army of lobbyists fanned out across a dozen federal agencies where Dodd-Frank rulemaking is underway.

When it comes to the CFPB, the big banks want to take power away from the agency’s director (a post long slated for presidential adviser Elizabeth Warren) and to give control of the bureau's budget to Congress (taking it away from the Federal Reserve where it is insulated it from partisan funding fights). A win on this later issue would ensure that the CFPB suffered a slow strangulation, a fate that befell the Consumer Product Safety Commission over a 40-year period. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/consumer-bureau-launches

[GTurck]

1. We can't have...

those poor bankers and businessmen inconvenienced by something so petty as rights of the people; now can we? After all if they don't make money how can they insure that their scams - er businesses stay safely unregulated and profitable. Frankly I would love to see the whole edifice fall from the top.

"...it is not uncommon to meet thieves who sermonize against theft..." Miguel de Unamuno