Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke started the new year with a reflective address to the American Economic Association on the causes of the financial crisis and steps to prevent a future crisis. Chairman Bernanke strongly stressed the need for “better, smarter” regulation and concedes that the Fed’s attempts at regulating the mortgage lending market were too little, too late. “Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates,” Bernanke said.

The U.S. House of Representatives made a historic vote in favor of consumers by passing H.R. 4173, the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009,” on December 11. This bill would create an agency with authority to set strong protections for financial products, such as mortgages, payday loans, and credit cards.

Crucial financial reform legislation is hitting the floor of the House of Representatives this week, including a bill to enact the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

The regulatory reform proposal released today by Chairman Dodd (D-CT) goes a long way to ensuring that consumers and communities across the country have access to safe, affordable, and sustainable financial products.   We believe that the proposal brings us closer to ending the assumption that some financial institutions are too big to fail, protecting the financial system against systemic risk, creating a single federal banking regulator, and enforcing the consumer protections that have gone unenforced for far too long.
 

Over major opposition from the financial industry and nearly all Republican committee members, the House Financial Services Committee today passed HR 3126, which would create the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to protect consumers from abusive and deceptive financial products and practices.  Advocates are hopeful that the bill will be strengthened in the Senate where Woodstock and others are pushing for agency oversight of the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been severely weakened under the current regulatory structure.

Woodstock Institute applauds Rep. Melissa Bean’s (D-IL) decision to withdraw her amendment to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) Act that would allow large national banks to override state consumer protection laws.