consumer financial protection agency

Published: 07/16/10

Is Tim Geithner Going to Block Elizabeth Warren From Leading New Consumer Protection Agency?

By Paul Wachter - AOL News

(July 16) -- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner doesn't like Elizabeth Warren. In her capacity as chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the U.S. banking bailout, she has interrogated Geithner before Congress (and the American public), and those interrogations have not reflected favorably on him. A typical exchange went like this: Why did the U.S. bail out AIG and its counterparties with taxpayers paying off credit-default swaps at their full, inflated rate but ask the insolvent auto industry to take major cuts? she asked Geither, who had no coherent explanation to ...

Published: 07/15/10

What's in the Financial Reform Bill? The 5 Key Changes

By Dana Chivvis - AOL News

(July 15) -- The financial reform bill (what's the financial reform bill, you ask?) was passed in the Senate today and will head to President Barack Obama's desk next. The bill has split the country -- or that part of the country paying attention -- along party lines: Democrats say Wall Street needs to be reined in to protect the economy; Republicans say the government is overstepping its authority by inserting itself too far into the market. The bill drew three Republican votes, from Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Sen. Russ Feingold of ...

Published: 03/12/10

Could Financial Protection Bill Be a Secret Weapon for Democrats in 2010?

By David Corn - Politics Daily

Can one mild-mannered Harvard law professor help the Democrats avoid an electoral calamity this November? It's possible. The person I have in mind is Elizabeth Warren. She chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the TARP bailout. But perhaps more important is her unofficial title: mother of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Several years ago -- before the 2008 crash -- she cooked up the idea of a federal agency that would set and enforce rules to protect consumers from the unscrupulous practices of banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders and other ...

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Published: 03/4/10

SNL All-Star Reunion: Ex-'Presidents' Push for Financial Reform

By Christopher Weber - Politics Daily

The five living ex-presidents and two ghosts of White House past pay a late-night visit to Barack Obama to push for financial reform in an all-star reunion of "Saturday Night Live" alums that has gone viral on the Internet. The five-minute video, directed by Ron Howard and available at FunnyOrDie.com, brings together all the actors who played "presidents" on SNL since the '70s. The cast features Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Dana Carvey, Dan Aykroyd, Darrell Hammond, Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. Jim Carrey makes a special guest appearance as the 40th president. There are plenty of jokes ...

Published: 03/2/10

Wall Street Reform Turns to Main Street, Maybe

By Joseph Schuman - AOL News

(March 2) -- Who's looking out for the little guy? During all the debate over government cures for the financial crisis, billions of dollars in bank bailouts and fiery finger-pointing at greedy executives and heedless regulators, questions about the plight of American consumers have largely gone unanswered. Repair to Wall Street periodically emerged as a headline issue in Washington, but it always overshadowed accompanying provisions aimed at helping Main Street. Now those consumer-protection rules are back in play, as a spark of potentially bipartisan financial legislation is kindled in ...

Published: 01/28/10

Obama's First Veto May Be Over Consumer Protection Bill

By Joann M. Weiner - Politics Daily

President Obama knows that most Americans have no idea how their local bank transforms thousands of monthly mortgage payments into arcane credit default swaps with AIG. But the president recognizes that the banks' financial engineering nearly brought on another Great Depression when the house of cards that their structured financial products created collapsed in 2008. And the president is committed to making sure that the American consumer will never again be put at the mercy of the bankers. ...

Published: 12/15/09

Obama Presses Banks to Lend, Accept New Regulations

By David Sessions - Politics Daily

In an hour-long meeting Monday, President Obama pressed executives from Wall Street banks to increase their lending to small businesses and stop fighting financial regulation efforts, the New York Times reports. "America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry," Obama said in remarks after the meeting. "Now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy." The president hoped to use the meeting to capitalize on public outrage at the banks' dependence on taxpayers for bailouts, and ...

Published: 09/14/09

Obama Tells Wall Street Bailout Days Are Over: Five Points to Ponder

By Lynn Sweet - Politics Daily

Five matters to consider in the wake of President Obama's warning to Wall Street Monday, in a major speech a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, that the days of big bailouts are over.1. Obama said that next time, the federal government won't be there to provide a fiscal safety net and he wants to avoid a next time. "While full recovery of the financial system will take a great deal more time and work, the growing stability resulting from these interventions means we're beginning to return to normalcy. But here's what I want to emphasize today: Normalcy cannot lead to complacency," ...