On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, previewed the upcoming House Financial Services Committee mark up of the bill that would create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency by slamming the financial industry and emphasizing the need for more comprehensive and cohesive regulation.
“We have a market now that is driven by how many tricks and traps I can bury in the fine print,” Warren said. “Regulations keep us safer.”
“They find as many ways as they can to trick people,” Warren added. “This puts the consumer at a massive disadvantage.”
The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency would essentially replace seven existing regulatory agencies and guard against abuses in the mortgage, credit card and related industries. The new agency would replace agencies “that aided and abetted or slept through the crisis,” said Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Program Director, who was also on the call. The idea is that with one regulatory agency handling all these corners of the financial industry, it’ll be harder for companies to “game and choose between” them.
Warren, Mierzwinski and Heather Booth, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, acknowledged on the call that they have an uphill battle to pass sweeping financial regulatory reform. That’s because the deep-pocketed financial industry is “an incredibly bigger, stronger Goliath,” Mierzwinski said.
“They’re trying to protect the system that failed,” he said. “They are part of the system that failed.”
So what’s the plan? Booth said her coalition is holding hundreds of demonstrations and public events throughout the country — including a three-day “showdown in Chicago” at the end of the month. They’re also targeting several congressmen who they see as either influential, persuadable, or both. They include Reps. Bill Foster (D-IL), Greg Meeks (D-NY), Joe Crowley (D-NY), Charlie Wilson (D-OH), Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), Jim Himes (D-CT), Gary Peters (D-MI) and John Adler (D-NJ). Not to mention Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
The plan, Booth said, is for constituents to bombard those and other lawmakers with phone calls, letters and e-mails supporting financial reform.
“This is a true David and Goliath fight,” she said. “But we know how that fight turned out.”
At least they’ve got their talking points down.
