Consumer Agency Within Fed Seen as Victory for Banking Industry

[kpete]

Source: Bloomberg

Consumer Agency Within Fed Seen as Victory for Banking Industry

By Craig Torres and Yalman Onaran

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- For consumer advocates, housing a new agency to protect Americans from financial-product abuse within the Federal Reserve would be a defeat after lobbying for an independent body. For banks, it would represent a victory.

Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called a Senate plan to house the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency at the Fed “a joke.” Shielding consumers from harmful financial products is “the most conspicuous failure by the Fed,” Frank said in an interview yesterday.

Banks say placing the agency with the Fed alleviates their concern that an independent entity would ignore the health of the financial system. Consumer advocates say it’s a mistake because the Fed didn’t succeed in curbing abuses during the subprime lending boom that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

“We have all sorts of individual agencies that protect Americans, and none of them is subservient to the regulator that is in charge of looking out for the industry,” said Lauren Saunders, managing attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Washington. “This agency has to be independent so that it can fix the problems the banking regulators failed to fix.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a..E.59TT96Y&pos=10

[Donnachaidh]

1. yeah - put the henhouse right IN the Fox's den

nothing to see here -- move along... :eyes:

[ixion]

2. Create a consumer agency largely inaccessible to consumers...

gee, thanks! Or not. :grr:

[FreakinDJ]

3. Thank a RATpubliCON for this

Big Guberment is Bad for Amurika

[WriteDown]

4. Don't forget Chris "low interest rate" Dodd! nt

[FreakinDJ]

5. Dodd - still spouting Failed Economic policies

like we need more of the same crap that got us in a Depression

[heli]

6. Putting it under the "regulator that is in charge of looking out for the industry"

is pretty much the same as burying it.

[earcandle]

7. Looks like our stupidity is falling apart, and intelligence, real intelligence is taking form.. go

gO GO!  Go AMERICA!   We can DO IT!  

Let us outsmart the foxes at every move. 

[Robbien]

8. This bill also takes away rights from the states to protect the consumer

Currently the most protection we have left is in our state courts. This bill removes that and puts it in Federal jurisdiction.

And the Feds sure do love corporations and the elites.

[denverbill]

9. Depends on the person in the job, IMO.

It's not like the FDA is doing a particularly good job of protecting consumers either and they are independent. That's what happens when you stick drug company/agribusiness executives in charge of the FDA. Put Howard Dean there and you'd have a different story.

Same with this new agency. Put a strong consumer advocate there and it won't matter that it's under the Fed. But nobody will ever put a strong consumer advocate in charge of any office, so what difference does it make?

[No Elephants]

22. And, if a strong advocate makes it in, no one pays attention anyway. (Elizabeth Warren.)

[PSPS]

10. How can a private entity (the Fed) be granted public law enforcement authority?

[heli]

12. Heck, they even have their own police force

with over 1,000 Federal Reserve Police Officers and everything.

[pattmarty]

11. Oh, goody. Another Obama victory! Another great Democratic President along.......

........with the likes of Clinton and Carter.:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Gin]

13. first...regulate them again so these things won't happen..

(IMO)

[pattmarty]

14. You got it. "Key" word is REGULATE. Then that would take some "balls".

[AlbertCat]

17. REGULATE!

Oh MY GOD! If we regulate the GOP will call us names. We'd better just fiddle around so we look busy.... but don't do anything that might make the GOP mad.

[No Elephants]

23. Yep. And if we don't regulate, the GOP will call us names and be mad, anyway. That's how it is.

It's very liberating.

The only thing Democrats need to worry about now is doing the right thing and making sure voters know how good it is and why. The rest will take care of itself.

[pjt7]

15. The FED should be stripped of

it's current regulatory powers.

& then audited.

[No Elephants]

24. Meh. I think the Fed would find a way to pass any audit.

[mariawr]

16. I say, H3ll no!!!!!11!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

18. "Independent" and "Housed by the Fed" . Umm... What. The. Fuck?!

They really do think we are all stupid. :mad:

[colsohlibgal]

19. Change Banksters Can Believe In

Wealthy banksters win yet again. The people...yet another big loss. Not that we should be shocked, Obama showed us his loyalties by appointing Summers and Geithner and telling populist middle and lower class champions like Reich and Liz Warren to go fly a kite.

[seafan]

20. Elizabeth Warren: The dispute is simple: "It's between families and banks."

Regarding the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Elizabeth Warren cuts to the chase:


March 3, 2010

.....

The dispute, after all, is a simple one, Warren said: "It's between families and banks."

"The lobbyists would like nothing better than for the story to be the (proposed) agency has died and everyone has given up," Warren said. "The lobbyists' closest friends in the Senate would like nothing better than passing an agency that has a good name but no real impact so they have something good to say to the voters -- and something even better to say to the lobbyists."

Warren said the new agency should have four simple attributes:

* A chief appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate;

* Independent budget authority, so it won't be subject to the whims of Congress or an anti-consumer administration;

* Independent rule-making authority, without interference by bank regulators or others who may focus on bank profitability before focusing on consumers;

* And independent enforcement powers, so the agency's investigators can go after abusive lenders.

"Those are the basic elements of an independent agency," Warren said.

.....

Dodd, who has been under fire for the level of his commitment to a muscular new agency, reiterated his support during a Tuesday evening interview on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC.

"What`s really important are four points that I have been insisting upon from the very beginning," Dodd said according to a transcript of his remarks. "One, I want a presidentially- appointed director of this operation. I want it confirmed by the Senate. I want a separate funding source. And I want it to have rule-making authority and enforcement authority.

"I'm going to insist upon those four points, wherever this is located," he said.

.....

However, much of the reporting lately has focused on where the proposed agency will be housed -- its "address," as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs put it this week. Warren said the focus is misplaced.

"It's the wrong place to look," Warren said. "The question is functional independence. Where the agency sits on an organization chart is less important than its functional independence."

.....

After all, Warren said, until a new agency is created, banks are going to continue bullying families into poor loans, mortgages and credit cards.

As Warren put it:

"No cop on the beat works for the biggest bullies in town."

No honest cop does, in any case...



Rock on, sister.

[No Elephants]

26. Just for the record, I posted Reply #22 before seeing your post. She's something, isn't she?

Methinks I may write in her name when Scott Brown runs for re-election.

[GreenTea]

21. Could one imagine a republican (no-regulations) president like Bush controlling this federal agency?

It would be gutted and made ineffective in a heartbeat - Never to be heard from again in the republican administration.

And future republicans presidents & their administrations would make changes to this same federal agency so as to make future Democratic presidents hand-tied, left with a shell of an agency controlled by banking interest with no real oversight or control in place, a phony bloated federal agency in looks only, used by the banks for cover and back room deal making.

Pretty much as the Dems are now by the banking industry....

The simple fact; banking corporations make the rules, pay-off politicians well and run & control our government.

[No Elephants]

25. Yes. I can imagine because I noticed what happened to PBS once Bushies got their hands on it.