Obama calls for consumer protection agency
Posted: Friday, October 09, 2009 5:16 PM by firstread
Filed Under:
Economy, Barack Obama
by NBC's Bobby Cervantes
President Obama today urged Americans to support the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a new federal entity intended to shield consumers from predatory lending and establish and enforce regulations on banks and mortgage brokers.
The new agency “will have just one mission: to look out for the financial interests of ordinary Americans,” the president said in an East Room address this afternoon. “It will be charged with setting clear rules of the road for consumers and banks, and it will be able to enforce these rules across the board.”
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who introduced the bill over the summer, has said the Office of Thrift Supervision and Comptroller of Currency would merge to create the new agency--a move which those offices have criticized. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bill would also strip goverment funding allocated to the Federal Reserve, another critic of the plan, for its consumer-oversight responsibilities, including mortgage regulation. Frank said the Financial Services Committee would vote on the CFPA's creation some time next week.
The president targeted critics of the plan in his speech: "It has never been more important to have a watchdog function like the one we've proposed. And yet, predictably, a lot of the banks and big financial firms don't like the idea of a consumer agency very much," Obama said, singling out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, he said "is spending millions on an ad campaign to kill it."
Referring to the proposed consolidation, Obama said, "With seven different federal agencies each having a role, there is too little accountability, too many loopholes, and no single agency whose sole job it is to stand up for people...Under the reforms we've proposed, that will change. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency that I have asked Congress to create will have just one mission: to look out for the financial interests of ordinary Americans."
