Auto dealers are swarming Capitol Hill, asking their Senators to exempt them from scrutiny by the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. They’ve already won an exemption from the House of Representatives. If the Senate gives them a free pass, too, it will hurt consumers, turn a blind eye to predatory practices, and violate the principle [...]
Wall Street turned crummy mortgage loans into a pot of gold. How did that happen? Fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, gave the public its first peek at the game. So did Michael Lewis’s must-read new book, “The Big Short,” about a handful of the clever people who bet [...]
We need a pro-consumer tea-party march on Washington–an angry march that tells the Senate we won’t take it anymore. Consumers are justly furious with banks that misled them about the costs and risks of their mortgages and credit cards, and skewered them with fees. President Obama wants to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, to [...]
There’s a point where a weak Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be worse than no agency at all. So far, the watered-down Senate bill remains on the right side of the line. But there might come a point where we all have to stand up and shout “no.”
For consumers, nothing—nothing—is more important than having an [...]
Maybe I mourned too soon.
I donned black crepe when Senator Chris Dodd (D) proposed killing Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency—replacing it with a “bureau” that looked like a useless glob. Supposedly, Dodd was trying to compromise with the Party of No. But for them, even a glob proved an ooze too far. He got zero [...]
