New Federal Consumer Agency False Front For Reform

[From article]
"Those two “consumers” who looked on as Obama signed the CFPB into law are also poor examples of the need for a new government bureaucracy. You can watch their stories in syrupy White House videos hosted by Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor (and today Massachusetts Senate candidate) who long championed the agency’s creation. According to one of the videos, Andrew Giordano’s bank mistakenly gave him a replacement debit card that offered overdraft protection, and he failed to realize it. He proceeded to overdraw the account multiple times, enough to result in $814 in fees. “Funds obviously were not there,” his wife says plaintively. “Why would [the bank] continue to accept the charges?” Warren neglects to respond with the obvious question: Why did Giordano have no idea how much money was in his account? Obama’s other video star, Robin Fox, is no more convincing. She became a victim when she racked up long-term debt on a variable-rate credit card and then professed shock when her card issuer exercised its right to raise the rate.
[. . .]
Uniform definitions and rules governing the financial industry would render lobbying from both the financial industry and consumer advocates irrelevant, a development that would upset current lobbyists and future lobbyists—that is, today’s congressmen. And another important constituency would balk: middle-class Americans, who increasingly see loose lending as a government entitlement. That’s why, at the Hunter College hearing, Cordray didn’t say that overdraft fees were outrageous and unacceptable but instead that “overdrafts can provide consumers with needed access to funds.”

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_3_consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html

After The Fall: Saving Capitalism From Wall Street—and Washington
by Nicole Gelinas
Dodd-Frank’s Protection Racket
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is both irrelevant and dangerous.
Summer 2012 Vol. 22 No. 3