The Washington Post
July 1, 2009
By Elizabeth Razzi
We’re getting more details on the Obama administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. According to proposed legislation the Treasury Department sent to Capitol Hill yesterday, this big, new federal umbrella would cover a lot of services that touch homeowners and buyers directly. It would become a one-stop shop to regulate mortgage lenders, replacing the patchwork of federal and state regulators that now cover the lending industry. The agency could issue guidelines for “standard” mortgages that don’t have prepayment penalties or other traps that have caused trouble for many borrowers.
The new agency also could impose a duty on mortgage brokers to offer appropriate mortgages to customers. It could ban the controversial “yield-spread premiums” — a fancy phrase for extra fees — paid to mortgage brokers who encourage borrowers to take out loans with higher interest rates.
The new agency would regulate real estate settlement services and companies that issue credit reports and scores, possibly requiring more disclosure to consumers about the information that influences those scores. …
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-address/2009/07/a_new.html
Someone has observed that the Obama administration is a continuation of the Bush administration in the financial area.
How anyone could “perceive” the Obama administration’s management of America’s financial system as a “continuation” of the Bush administration’s financial “management” is “eye-crossing”.
Playing a financial roll in America’s economic system are:
Labor
Business
Consumers
For the labor category, the Obama administration has yet to fire 11,000 control tower workers as the original(80’s) neocon administration did. That action put the “fear” of the federal government into labor.
The neocons quickly separated labor’s increasing productivity from labor’s pocket-books. The fruits of labor’s increasing productivity went elsewhere. That “management” idea, likely, helped control inflation. If labor’s pocket-books were lean, labor could not spend. And that helps keep inflation down. Inflation due to out of control oil prices was “immune” to neocon inflation controls. It appears that some inflation is good inflation and some inflation is bad inflation – understand?
For the business category, the Obama administration has not adopted the attitude that business will or shall put America first. The Obama administration knows that America has an obligation to America. Business has an obligation to business. And indeed, labor has an obligation to labor. So, responsibility for America’s leadership is likely to come from the ranks of GOVERNMENT. It is UNWISE for government to delegate or abandon its authority to “look out for America’s economic health”. It should be evident by now that lassie faire is not the Obama administration’s idea of good government.
And America should be thankful.
The consumer category has taken quite a beating under the neocons. The consumer was required to pay – sometimes dearly. In an attempt to ease the burden of high priced prescription drugs, Americans visited a foreign country – Canada. Americans wanted to buy their prescription drugs in Canada. That was an example of the using the “GLOBAL ECONOMY” tool – RIGHT? Wrong!
There were “high pitched squeals” coming from the pharmaceutical industry over the American consumer’s attempt to balance their prescription drug budgets by buying prescription drugs from Canada.
And finally, the America consumer “ran out of money”. The American dream went up in smoke. The goose that laid the golden egg was no longer laying. Money started “drying up”.
The managers of money know little about “getting their hands dirty” in the creation of money. They are not going to pump gas or fix automobile engines or play sports or program computers or create house-hold furniture. Their status in life precludes creating money that way.
But now, the Obama administration wants to “level the consumer playing field”. This is, by no means, a CONTINUATION of anything the Bush administration started.
