Are Democrats Ready to Fight for Consumer Protection?

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



Are Democrats Ready to Fight for Consumer Protection?
Bank lobbyists are marshaling opposition to the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Tim Fernholz | July 8, 2009 | web only



When the Obama administration announced its regulatory-reform package, I was nervous. Not because the proposal doesn't do enough to reform the financial sector -- conventional wisdom was right to predict a pragmatic approach that moved the ball forward but not far enough. I was nervous because the strongest part of the proposal, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, seemed like a sitting duck for bank lobbyists who have made an art of foiling any and all attempts to keep their industry in check.

But now the administration seems ready to fight, promising unequivocally to create the agency as part of its regulatory-reform push. White House spokesperson Jen Paski told the Prospect that the administration is approaching the legislation to create the agency, sent to Capitol Hill last week, with "a high level of engagement. … The president is committed to signing a regulatory reform bill by the end of the year, and we look forward to working with Congress to get that done." That's a new tone from the administration, but it will take more than that to pass a bill that the financial lobby adamantly opposes.

Representatives of the industry that gambled its way into the crisis have been unapologetic -- and ungrateful -- as they've opposed every restriction on their activities that came with the government's rescue of their sector. They've fought and killed legislation to protect mortgage holders from foreclosure during a bankruptcy -- colloquially known as "cramdown," it would have eliminated an egregious loophole in current law that favored mortgage lenders. The administration even had to put its plan to reform student lending into a special congressional procedure called reconciliation to protect it from an inevitable filibuster prompted by financial interests.

So when the Consumer Financial Protection Agency emerged as a part of the administration's regulatory overhaul plan, many left-leaning observers were skeptical that the proposed agency would make it through Congress intact. There were reports that the CFPA barely made it into the final draft -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was initially lukewarm about the consolidated regulator, but he was eventually convinced of its merits by other Treasury officials and Larry Summers, the president's top economics adviser. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=are_democrats_ready_to_fight_for_consumer_protection

[bemildred]

1. I'm not a "consumer". I'm a citizen. I have rights.

I want these fuckwits to stop calling me a consumer first. Then we will talk about other things.