Must Read from Elizabeth Warren: Consumer Protection as Systemic Safety

[flpoljunkie]

We must make our voices heard on a truly independent consumer protection agency!

Consumer Protection as Systemic Safety

If we safeguard consumers, we also save the entire financial system from its own excesses.

ELIZABETH WARREN
April 26, 2010

The Senate is in the midst of a fierce battle over the future of the consumer-credit market. If you aren't watching, you should be.

While President Barack Obama and reform advocates are pushing for the sort of meaningful rules that would fix a badly broken credit market, Wall Street is pouring millions of dollars into blocking any changes that could force the industry to change how it does business. At the center of this fight is a proposal for a new consumer agency with the authority to write meaningful rules and with the teeth to enforce those rules.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd's latest proposal, which the committee recently reported to the full Senate, would house the watchdog in the Federal Reserve System. Although the agency would not be stand-alone, as it was in the version Barney Frank led the House to approve, the Senate bill still gives it substantial authority. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island is pushing for a truly independent agency, as the president proposed, while Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is leading the charge to put the agency more directly under the thumb of the regulators who have routinely favored banking interests. Whether the consumer agency can survive in meaningful form will be up to the Senate in the days ahead and then the House-Senate conference.

more...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=consumer_protection_as_systemic_safety

[Kdillard]

1. k and r. Now that the Republicans have finally stopped playing

Around we do need to make sure our voices are heard and the reforms will protect us.

[flpoljunkie]

2. We sure as hell do! Here is some of the amendments we might want to get behind.

I do hope that Bernie Sanders will able to get a vote his credit card usury amendment--limiting to the same as required by law for credit unions--15%.

Dems Plan To Toughen Wall Street Reform Bill On Senate Floor
by Ryan Grim

04-26-10

If Senate leadership can overcome a Republican filibuster and begin debate on Wall Street reform, a group of Democratic senators will be ready with amendments to strengthen the bill on the floor, testing just how far centrist and conservative Democrats are willing to go to rein in the financial industry.

Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman will be pushing for an amendment curtailing the activity of the biggest banks and breaking many of them up. The amendment would limit the size of a bank's total assets to two percent of GDP and cap the insured deposits that one institution could control at ten percent of the aggregate.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), possibly with GOP cosponsors, has an amendment that would open the Federal Reserve up to a real audit. The current language keeps much Fed activity in the dark.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) has committed to introducing an amendment to create an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, rather than one housed within the Fed or another regulator.

Reed also has an amendment that would close the loophole in Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) current bill allowing private equity and venture capital to avoid registering with and reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hedge funds have a similar loophole that will likely be attacked on the floor.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) will push to include what's known as the Volcker Rule -- legislation that would bar banks from engaging in trading for their own benefit rather than that of a client.

With a variant of the Levin-Merkley amendment, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) will make an effort to reinstate Glass-Steagall.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/dems-plan-to-toughen-wall_n_552026.html