Barack Obama to create Consumer Financial Protection Agency

[jefferson_dem]

Barack Obama to create Consumer Financial Protection Agency

President Barack Obama on Wednesday will call for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of his long-awaited plan for overhauling the nation’s market regulatory structure in response to last year’s meltdown, administration officials tell POLITICO.

The promise to “re-regulate” the wounded financial system after the go-go years is one of the centerpieces of the president’s agenda, in a year when he’s taking on many of the nation’s most complex problems all at once. Officials call the overhaul by far the biggest since the 1930s.

The new independent agency – which Obama will begin talking up in a series of interviews on Tuesday afternoon — will look after consumers on matters like credit cards, with “a very clear line of accountability around products that they deem abusive of consumers, or misleading,” a senior administration official said.

The consumer agency is one of the proposals in a Treasury Department “white paper” of 85-plus pages that outlines what the White House calls a “comprehensive plan for new rules of the road for the financial industry.”

The plan, to be unveiled by Obama on Wednesday, does not ban specific financial products, and officials decided to “harmonize rules” among existing regulators rather than eliminate or consolidate agencies, as they had considered at the outset.

The Federal Reserve will get more power, but there will be no new “super-regulator” like Britain’s Financial Services Authority
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23790.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. Excellent! Most 'debt counselors' are funded by charge card companies, etc. nt

[derby378]

2. We're CITIZENS, not CONSUMERS

Maybe I'm just being cranky, but I'm tired of the government treating us like so many useful feeders.

[Dawgs]

3. You are cranky.

:)

[The2ndWheel]

4. More of a digit on a screen than anything

An interchangeable, expendable, predictable cog. To be molded and standardized by the state until you fit the requirements of future productivity, and then worn down by the corporation until you aren't worth maintaining. Faceless. Nameless. Efficiently used to the needs of a system you have less and less say about. Just one among many mass produced products, all increasingly forced into the same box for shipment to various parts of the world which has no place. Consumers would be an improvement.

[DrToast]

9. You're cranky. You ARE a consumer

If you're not a consumer, then you don't need protection and this law doesn't apply to you.

[Phx_Dem]

12. When you buy something, you're a consumer.

If you're not buying anything, then you don't need a watchdog or a consumer protection agency.

:D

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. Sounds nice- in theory

I'll be interested to see more details. I like how he is trying to come up with some new ideas and not just pushing the same old "stale" ones.

[Orsino]

7. Since Congress seems violently opposed to protecting us...

...perhaps the Executive Branch will step up.

[dgibby]

6. "The Federal Reserve will get more power....."

Like THAT'S a good idea!:puke:

[Vidar]

8. Who'll he put in charge, Rupert Murdoch or Bernie Madoff?

[SpartanDem]

10. Queue up the GOP whining about socialism

[FrenchieCat]

11. The Whining will come from all sides......

I call it knee jerk.