The Need for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency

[centurion180ad]

This isn't the FUCKING problem, and Professor Warren God damn well knows it. 28 Trillion in plundered dollars have been laundered overseas and 1.5 QUADRILLION in derivatives are sucking the entire planet into a banker's black hole.

Professor Warren as a defacto Inspector General, ought to be calling bankers onto Congresses carpet, demanding answers & actions, and when they balk she ought to be unceremoniously throwning them into Fort Leavenworth.

[whoo689]

Consumers don't need your paternalist "protection." Credit cards and toasters are 2 entirely different things. One of them I CAN find lots of info about on my own and can fairly understand the terms. I can also BE CAREFUL with the card and not spend it on all my purchases. Toasters are another story. The companies that manufacture them have to be sure that they won't malfunction on us, because we pay good money for these goods. We can't know for sure how well they work til we get home.

[whoo689]

"Protect us from flaming mortgages"?? NOOOO! You idiots in Washington have done enough damage in the housing market. Get out! Dissolve Fannie and Freddie and stop this homeownership nonsense. Your incompetence led to the housing bubble which eventually burst and screwed us all. You forced banks to give out loans to excessively risky borrowers they would not otherwise give. Lots of them defaulted, and that fucked up real estate. Just let the market heal, for christ sake.

[whoo689]

If a consumer is too stupid to check his credit card balance and goes over the limit, he deserves to be punished through fees, just like if someone is delinquent on payments. Credit cards aren't that difficult to use, and it's not like they're essential to living. Let's give up this fight to "rein in" card agencies and let smart consumers protect themselves with cards and stupid consumers get screwed, as they deserve. It'll be a learning experience for the bad consumers, too.

[whoo689]

I wonder: Is there a single professor in America who is an expert on finances and credit cards that's NOT a liberal or regulation-happy nut? One that actually believes in reforming the market to help consumers, rather than piling on red tape to protect consumers from themselves?

Let's face it: This hearing isn't needed. It's not THAT hard to use a credit card. You just DON'T use it for everything! You make sure you've got an actual income and can pay card purchases off, too.

[whoo689]

What is most frightening is that people like Warren treat credit cards as this "essential" American good, sort of like bread or a car. The reality, though, is that people should use credit cards fairly rarely and wisely. Too many people DON'T do this and get in huge debt, and then Democrats and regulators blame the wrong people for American consumers' idiocy. They scapegoat the 'evil corporations' for "screwing over" consumers instead of having them take responsibility for themselves.

[whoo689]

This ill-named "Consumer Protection" Agency will just be another in a long line of agencies proposed to protect consumers but in the long run will hurt them in many ways. "Consumer protection" is just Washington Newspeak for "controlling your economic futures and destroying choices for consumers".

I mean, sure, the FULL fine print of credit cards are several pages long, but it's not like you NEED to read every single page to compare cards. They usually sum up the main terms.

[whoo689]

This is just another in a long line of extremely stupid decisions made by the Obama Administration to try to "prevent" another crash and 'save' the economy. There seems to be good evidence that Henry Paulson, a former Treasury Secretary, and his friends in Treasury and the Fed pretty much EXTORTED teh banks into taking the bailouts.

"If you don't take the bailouts, your regulator will have you do so" That's pretty much what they said.