Attacking Consumer Protection

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



Attacking Consumer Protection
by Jonathan Tasini

Tuesday 08 of September, 2009


A few weeks ago, I noted that the powers-that-be inside Washington had the knives out for the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It's pretty clear why: this is an agency that, if it works, would shatter the cozy little closed relationship between Wall Street and the regulators (e.g., the Federal Reserve Board) who were asleep at the wheel when the financial bubble grew and then popped and...well, you know the rest of the story.

Today, The Wall Street Journal tells us the campaign to scuttle the new watchdog is drawing a lot of dough:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching an advertising campaign of at least $2 million aimed at defeating a central plank of the Obama administration's financial-regulation overhaul.

It's a campaign that is being conducted in the shadows of the health care debate so it is not getting a lot of attention. But, it bears watching. Remember, these are the same folks who pushed through the dreaded bankruptcy "reform" bill (a gift to the credit card industry). It is astonishing--if not surprising--that the people who helped seed the recent financial crisis that led to the obliteration of millions of jobs are still at it.


http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=14477