"Uhhhh......yeaaaah."
Because let's face it folks. You're too dumb to buy anything without the government helping you out to make the right choices in life.
Even neater is that President Obama has exercised his strong leadership by choosing the head of this outfit while Congress was on recess. That's supposed to be a no-no, but President Obama is a strong leader who can't wait for Congress to dither. It is called "the urgency of now". The consumers need protection now when making their choices.
"Who will Jason give the rose to?"
The new guy's name is Richard Cordray. Who is Richard Cordray, you ask?
Don't worry about it. He is young. He is energetic. He looks like Tim Geithner's college roommate. His job is to make sure you, the consumer, don't get ripped off when making choices.
"Hey man, you're short. I'm gonna get my crew at the CFPB on your ass."
Anyway, the government's now got your back. Forget about that Better Business Bureau. They don't have the resources of the federal government. Think about it. Aside from Cordray, we'll have asst directors, associate directors, offices all over the US, regional directors, section chiefs, investigators, and all kinds of bean counters. That means...JOBS-Green Jobs.
Better yet, all you folks out there who want to buy a house you can't afford, the CFPB will protect you from making dumb choices. We'll go after all those mortgage lending companies who told you you could afford a house you couldn't afford because they were told by Congress that if they didn't do that, they would be accused of discrimination. We will go after the thieves who created that whole mortgage meltdown.
Thieves
In conclusion.........
This agency is long overdue. The only people carping about it are hopeless ideologues and the most vicious of capitalists.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that I don't need anybody looking over my shoulder to tell me what to take off the shelf and buy. But that isn't the CFPB's job.
When I take a jar of apricot jam off the shelf, I DO need some assurance that it contains apricots, that the contents are sterilized, that no poisonous adulterants have been added... but that is the FDA's job.
The Consumer FINANCIAL Protection Bureau's job is to stop PayDay Loan Store from charging 500% interest -- I think it is going to be limited to 30%, which is quite usurious enough. That's a good thing. Also, it might, just might, get those oversize banks back into a practice of lending at reasonable rates of interest to those who can pay it back, and stop them from lending at usurious rates to people who won't be able to pay it back.
What's not to like? Next you'll be telling us that Mafia loan sharks are find and dandy, because its a free market, and if people don't want to pay high interest on time on pain of having their noses slit open, they should go find a different lender.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteHow many protections do we need? WE do need protection from our govt. You can blame the banks all you want, but did you overlook the pics of Barney and Dodd?
I didn't overlook anything Gary. I blame Frank 'n Dodd for the fact that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has far less teeth than it should have, that the enabling legislation did not cap the percentage of GDP or national wealth that any one bank can hold, and for leaving fuzzy the notion that the government won't bail out any more banks but also won't stop them getting so big that we really can't let them fail because they really would take the whole economy down with them.
ReplyDeleteTo take your facile line that we need protection from government at face value, we should immediately dissolved the armed forces, the DEA, the SBA... oh, but wait, these serve valid purposes, do they not?
We need protection from domineering predatory banks quite as much as we do from drug cartels.