Today’s Miller-Moore amendment makes more sense than would first appear.  The new rule, coming out of the House Financial Services Committee, exempts most financial institutions from new regulatory review by the proposed CFPA.

Banks with assets under $10 billion, and credit unions with assets under $1.5 billion, would not be examined by the CFPA.  It seems like a cave-in, right?  What’s up with the lobbyists giving up on so much work from those 8,000 clients? What’s up with helping the country prevent another meltdown?

Advocates initially responded with some frustration.  The National Community Reinvestment Coalition published a (more…)

The GAO has spoken, but will the regulators listen?

The General Accounting Office issued a blistering report that put much of the blame for our financial crisis on the feet of the regulatory agencies. The GAO also made some specific policy suggestions.  Many of those proposals, incidentally, are contained in some form within the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA).

The GAO said that both a lack of adequate data collection and a system that is too broken up were important in (more…)

You may have heard some of the arguments against the CFPA:

• it will thwart innovation of financial products
• it will harm choice, including choices for low-income consumers
• it will add an unneeded layer of regulation

It should not be surprising that a lot of these arguments are made by people who have a friendly view of big (more…)