Obama's Consumer Watchdog Targets Mortgage, Payday Lenders - BusinessWeek
Consumers may benefit from its reach whenever they take out a payday loan, negotiate a mortgage rate, borrow money for school or pay a credit card fee. For those who think they've been wronged, there will be a complaint system to help them fight back.
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The congressional republicans fought bitterly to keep this day from coming--the day when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would start operating, two years after it was created. First they filibustered Elizabeth Warren's nomination until Obama finally withdrew it. Then he nominated Richard Cordray in her stead because, he thought, Cordray would be acceptable to the republicans. But they kept his nomination from coming to a vote anyway. They demanded that the enabling legislation for this new agency be changed. The House republicans knew Obama would make a recess appointment, so they refused to agree that the Senate could go into recess, which led to the absurd 30-second sessions being held every few days by one person. Of course, they were on recess, but just pretending that they weren't. Finally Obama just made the appointment on the grounds that the Senate was actually in recess. He called them on their nonsense. This has produced howls of fake outrage from Fox News and AM talk radio.
This is an important agency, at least potentially. American need protection against payday lenders, mortgage companies, mortgage "rescue" scam artists, corrupt and thieving banks, and a host of other social parasites. The house republicans are so extreme in their views that they are blinded to one simple reality: Americans are headed toward debt peonage, and if things don't change soon, at some point there will be a massive political and possibly violent rebellion against the entire system.
2 comments:
I hope the Tea Partiers enjoy getting paid in scrip, because they're going to need it to buy essential goods at the company store.
On July 14, 2004, Evan McKenzie wrote:
Horrible as it is to say this, I expect more of this sort of thing. It is getting harder to live outside CIDs because of the tremendous market dominance of common interest housing in new construction. Of course, nothing a condo board does would ever justify or excuse this sort of violence, but they often do things--rightly or wrongly--that send people into a flat spin. With millions of people getting conscripted into a style of life they don't understand and accept, the law of averages says that conflict, and often serious conflict, will result. Most of the time it is just cold stares and lawsuits. Occasionally something like this happens.
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