Wed 3 Mar, 2010
Thanks for looking out for the little guy:
Mother Jones has obtained a copy of Sen. Chris Dodd’s plan to house a consumer financial protection office within the Department of the Treasury rather than creating an independent agency. Several other news sources have received copies, but none have made the leaked document publicly available. We’re posting Chris Dodd’s consumer financial protection plan here (PDF). It seems certain to disappoint experts and progressives who had called for a powerful new agency. (Andy Kroll has more on this.) This is the document’s top-line summary:
Create a [Bureau of Financial Protection] inside of Treasury with a Presidentially-appointed director; a dedicated budget (through assessments on large banks, non-banks, and with the Fed making up the shortfall); autonomous rule-writing authority with the regulations to apply across-the-board to all entities offering financial services or products; and examination and enforcement authority for large banks and mortgage companies, small banks in a back-up capacity, and other non-banks on a risk basis, as described below.
The independent agency proposal would be dropped.
Now why would Chris Dodd water down a bill he strongly supported a year ago? Easy, his corporate master, Jamie Dimon, told him too:
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, says he believes Washington has become increasingly erratic and unfair in its treatment of the banks over the last few months, and he now has some regrets about participating in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
[...]
Mr. Dimon said Thursday at the Investor Day conference that he supported certain new regulations to secure the financial system, but not all of them. He said JPMorgan had always supported the creation of a systemic risk regulator, which would be controlled by the Federal Reserve, to monitor the largest and most interconnected banks in the nation.
He disagreed with one proposal to create a separate agency devoted to consumer protection, which would regulate a whole host of activities from mortgages to credit cards.
“We want better consumer protection; we just don’t want a new agency. We think it should be done by the O.C.C. and the Fed,” Mr. Dimon said, referring to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
“Yes, you can say they didn’t do a great job, but they are professional people,” he said. The elegant solution is for Congress to tell them do a better job.”
Mr. Dimon may get his wish, thanks to some persuasive lobbyists in Washington. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said last month that he might drop demands for a new agency after pushing for its creation.
Many people believe Democrats are pussies. They’re not. They’re just corrupt and do whatever their corporate masters tell them to do.
Tags: Fuck Chris Dodd, Fuck Democrats, Fuck I'm out of scotch, Fuck Republicans
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