Friday, congressional negotiators announced a financial reform bill agreement. It will be voted on by the House and Senate next week. If it passes, the financial reform bill changes most of the rules that form the relationship between financial institutions and consumers. Some feel consumers will win big with the bill. Others feel consumers will be shafted.
Article Resource: Financial reform bill agreement touted as a big win for consumers by Personal Money Store
New consumer protection agency
The financial reform bill gives consumers a new agency to watch for their interests. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will monitor loan products to keep consumers safe. Business Week reports that Democrats defeated all of the Republican efforts to scale back the powers of the proposed consumer agency. But the financial reform bill sets up a bureau with independent funding. It will be part of the Federal Reserve and also has the power to enforce rules banning abusive practices in credit-card and mortgage lending.
Fiduciary standards hurt consumers?
A provision in the financial reform bill that requires all of the brokers to abide by a fiduciary standard when they give investment advice has those in that industry crying foul. David Loeper of Forbes says that part of the financial reform bill might just hurt the protection of consumers. He feels that way because the bill requires brokers to be held to a fiduciary standard enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission, just as investment advisers are today. As reported by Loeper, that means consumers won’t be able to tell the difference between brokers and investment advisers. Apparently he believes that being able to trust both species equally isn’t a good thing.
Consumer agency consolidates oversight
The financial reform bill’s Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection would like to consolidate oversight of a wide variety of financial products, including mortgages, credit cards and payday loans. ABC News reports that responsibility for these areas is scattered across a variety of government agencies. Experts say that creating a single supervisor will help make financial products easier to understand and not take unfair advantage of borrowers.
Consumer protection leadership
The consumer Financial Protection Bureau was designed by Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Professor who is chairwoman of the congressional oversight panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion government bailout of the financial industry. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio explained to Business week that he “would love” to see Warren appointed to head the agency. Brown said he knew people who wanted Warren to be in charge.
You should never mess with Elizabeth Warren
Warren, who specializes in bankruptcy and also in consumer law, called for regulations to limit all credit-card contracts to a short, easy-to-read document, curb bank overdraft fees and make online credit scores free. In an interview with USA Today she said:
“I discovered the extent to which the business model of selling debt to middle-class families has changed over the past 20 years. The credit card companies and other lenders moved to a tricks and traps pricing model. The fees, the interest rate hikes and all the other surprises in the fine print have left families increasingly vulnerable. I watched hardworking, play-by-the-rules middle-class families collapse financially, and that led me to study the consumer credit market and eventually to the idea behind the consumer financial protection agency.”
Additional information at these websites
Business Week
businessweek.com/news/2010-06-22/warren-should-head-new-consumer-agency-brown-says.html
Forbes
blogs.forbes.com/investor/2010/06/25/financial-reform-bill-will-shaft-consumers/
ABC News
abcnews.go.com/Business/article/financial-reform-bill-means-big-consumers/story?id=11012343&page=1
USA Today
usatoday.com/money/companies/regulation/2010-06-24-warren24_ST_N.htm
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