tell the senate: we need financial reform now!

[saz]

i came across this petition that elizabeth warren is championing the other day and it seems like a really good cause. she seems like only of the few who is fighting for the middle and working classes and strong regulatory reform.



http://www.change.org/affil/actions/view/tell_the_senate_we_need_financial_reform_now


Tell the Senate: We Need Financial Reform Now!

Targeting: The U.S. Senate

Started by: Americans for Fairness in Lending (http://www.change.org/affil)

Toasters, toys, Tylenol, title loans: one of these things is not like the others. We have government agencies in charge of regulating many consumer products, but not nearly enough attention is given to financial products. With your help, that can change.

Financial reform passed the House in December, but just barely (http://blog.affil.org/2009/12/hr-4173-whats-in-whats-out/). Now, we're facing the same fight in the Senate, and the banks are pulling out all the stops to kill legislation that would create reform. It's up to us to make sure our Senators stand up for Main Street, not Wall Street.

In the meantime, the big banks continue to take advantage of consumers by issuing subprime mortgages, raising credit card interest rates at any time for any reason, levying obscene bank fees, and hitting Americans with other tricks and traps. It's time that there was an agency with the sole mission of protecting consumers from these abusive loan practices and products. It's time we had a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (http://ourfinancialsecurity.org/2009/01/the-consumer-financial-protection-agency-cfpa/).

The CFPA would have the power to write and enforce rules to make sure that bad lending products don't make it into the market. It would be able to assure consumers that their mortgages, like their toasters, will not explode in their faces.

This is a fight that consumers can't afford to lose. Write to your elected officials today and ask them to support financial reform and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.


Support financial reform and the CFPA!

Dear Senator,

Please support financial reform and the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). Please support legislation which will protect me from abusive lending products and the "casino culture" on Wall Street which endangers my savings.

Our community offers more than enough proof about the need for a strong and effective CFPA. Our neighbors struggle with excessive credit card interest rates, foreclosures resulting from sub-prime mortgages, unfair debit card fees, and other abusive lending products that would be regulated under a CFPA.

The CFPA should serve as a regulatory floor, not a ceiling. If our elected officials back home find the need to pass stronger laws to protect consumers, they should be allowed to do so without having to deal with federal preemption. If this had been permitted in the past, we could have stopped bad financial products from getting onto the national market.

I am asking you to not only support the CFPA, but also to ensure that it has the ability to truly protect consumers. Please push for the creation of a strong and effective CFPA that will actually be able to make a difference for consumers of today and tomorrow.

Please make sure Wall Street is effectively policed by strong, transparent regulators committed to the long-term public good.

I know that the financial services industry is putting a lot of pressure on you in an attempt to create an ineffective and powerless CFPA, and I ask you to use this opportunity to show that you stand with your citizens, not with the big banks and their lobbyists.

Please use your vote to support the creation of the CFPA for the sake of the consumers in your district, the American people, and the economy as a whole.

[Your name here]

[Documad]

There are already numerous federal agencies with the authority to regulate in this area. The administration could chose to put people in charge of those agencies who are interested in using that power. It's not just the SEC and all the ones we know. I'm trying to think of the name of the agency that had the most power in this area all along but it escapes me now.

I am skeptical of creating a new agency in hopes that the new agency will do what the old agencies didn't do. Why would it? What would be different? The head of the new agency will be appointed by the same people who appoint the heads of the other regulatory agencies and the people who work in the new agency will still focus more on establishing their turf than on ferreting out problems. There are so many federal agencies with staggering power. We have environmental laws, antitrust laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, etc but the people in charge of the agencies need to want to use the power. And I don't know when we ever had a president who instructed those people to unleash the power, consequences be damned.

This is always the legislature's answer to problems and it almost never works. For me it's in the same ballpark as "let's have a commission study the problem."

There was a decent argument that Homeland Security would coordinate various competing agencies, and maybe there was some improvement re computer networking, but it also killed FEMA, which was one agency that used to do a good job of exercising its authority.

I could get behind a reform that closed a dozen or so other agencies and put everything under the same roof. Because having numerous agencies that regulate banks for instance, just lets all of them point the finger at each other.

[Documad]

For instance, here's a small taste of what the OCC's website says it can do:

In regulating national banks, the OCC has the power to: Examine banks. Approve or deny applications for new charters, branches, capital, or other changes in corporate or banking structure. Take supervisory actions against banks that do not comply with laws and regulations or that otherwise engage in unsound banking practices. The agency can remove officers and directors, negotiate agreements to change banking practices, and issue cease and desist orders as well as civil money penalties.
Issue rules and regulations governing bank investments, lending, and other practices.

The OCC's website also says: The National Bank Act authorized the Comptroller of the Currency (the head of the OCC) to hire a staff of national bank examiners to supervise and periodically examine national banks. The act also gave the Comptroller authority to regulate lending and investment activities of national banks.

The OCC had the authority to audit and regulate the investments banks make. So why were all the big banks engaging in incredibly risky behavior that would have been obvious to anyone who ever took a single financial class in college?

The websites of federal agencies are a hoot! They are so full of all the things they COULD be doing, but why aren't they doing it? Is it because banks can decide who will regulate them by deciding how they are set up? Is it because the OCC's budget is derived from fees of the banks they regulate? Is it because if the OCC insisted that banks make sound investments then the banks wouldn't register with the OCC and the OCC would go out of business? I don't know, I'm only speculating based upon a 3 minute review of the OCC's website.

[saz]

There are already numerous federal agencies with the authority to regulate in this area. The administration could chose to put people in charge of those agencies who are interested in using that power. It's not just the SEC and all the ones we know. I'm trying to think of the name of the agency that had the most power in this area all along but it escapes me now.

I am skeptical of creating a new agency in hopes that the new agency will do what the old agencies didn't do. Why would it? What would be different? The head of the new agency will be appointed by the same people who appoint the heads of the other regulatory agencies and the people who work in the new agency will still focus more on establishing their turf than on ferreting out problems. There are so many federal agencies with staggering power. We have environmental laws, antitrust laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, etc but the people in charge of the agencies need to want to use the power. And I don't know when we ever had a president who instructed those people to unleash the power, consequences be damned.

This is always the legislature's answer to problems and it almost never works. For me it's in the same ballpark as "let's have a commission study the problem."

There was a decent argument that Homeland Security would coordinate various competing agencies, and maybe there was some improvement re computer networking, but it also killed FEMA, which was one agency that used to do a good job of exercising its authority.

I could get behind a reform that closed a dozen or so other agencies and put everything under the same roof. Because having numerous agencies that regulate banks for instance, just lets all of them point the finger at each other.

For instance, here's a small taste of what the OCC's website says it can do:

In regulating national banks, the OCC has the power to: Examine banks. Approve or deny applications for new charters, branches, capital, or other changes in corporate or banking structure. Take supervisory actions against banks that do not comply with laws and regulations or that otherwise engage in unsound banking practices. The agency can remove officers and directors, negotiate agreements to change banking practices, and issue cease and desist orders as well as civil money penalties.
Issue rules and regulations governing bank investments, lending, and other practices.

The OCC's website also says: The National Bank Act authorized the Comptroller of the Currency (the head of the OCC) to hire a staff of national bank examiners to supervise and periodically examine national banks. The act also gave the Comptroller authority to regulate lending and investment activities of national banks.

The OCC had the authority to audit and regulate the investments banks make. So why were all the big banks engaging in incredibly risky behavior that would have been obvious to anyone who ever took a single financial class in college?

The websites of federal agencies are a hoot! They are so full of all the things they COULD be doing, but why aren't they doing it? Is it because banks can decide who will regulate them by deciding how they are set up? Is it because the OCC's budget is derived from fees of the banks they regulate? Is it because if the OCC insisted that banks make sound investments then the banks wouldn't register with the OCC and the OCC would go out of business? I don't know, I'm only speculating based upon a 3 minute review of the OCC's website.

Professor Elizabeth Warren explains why America needs a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYd08e5Cjvs

[travesty]

I've always liked her since I saw her in a Frontline interview back in like '04 or so. She's sharp as a whip. Her policy opinions don't always jive with mine, but there's no questioning her knowledge on the matter of finances and the credit industry.

[Documad]

Yeah, I know who she is. I'll support a new federal agency if they get rid of a bunch of the current ones.

But you should certainly write to your senator if you support it. It's better to send your own personal letter rather than sending a form letter, and don't send it to the senator's DC address. Send it to the senator's local office in your community.

[valvano]

didn't you get the memo? overlapping govt bureaucracy is part of obama's jobs program...

[saz]

Seriously, valvano, stay the hell out of my threads. I don't appreciate you coming along and dumbing down the discussion with your repetitive broken-record litany of right-wing buzzword bullshit. Just fuck off.

.

[yeahwho]

didn't you get the memo? overlapping govt bureaucracy is part of obama's jobs program...

aren't you supposed to be looking for your stapler?

[valvano]

.

you mean responses that include the words "Halliburton", "illegal war", "tax cuts for the rich", "big oil"? those seem to make up about 95% of you left leaning liberals posts here....:D

[saz]

you have nothing to offer here, except trolling threads with your repetitive bullshit.