CALPIRG Blog

CALPIRG's Federal Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski testifies today at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on the Obama financial regulatory reform plan (testimony).Here's his report from Washington:

Yesterday, a phalanx of bank lobbyists testified as well. Apparently, there wasn't enough room at the table, because bank lawyer-lobbyist Ollie Ireland is joining consumer and community advocates as yet another industry witness today. While the hearings are on the full Obama plan -- safety and soundness, derivatives reform, the Fed, investor protection, etc. -- the banks have aimed the full might of their campaign-cash fueled lobby against the plan centerpiece: establishing a PIRG-backed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) has announced a committee vote on the agency for the end of the month. My colleague Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America, who joins me today as a witness, represented consumer groups and Americans for Financial Reform Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the consumer agency. The Washington Post on banker opposition at yesterday's House hearing, the Politico on the fight over reform and Bob Herbert's column Chutzpah on Steroids in the New York Times. Excerpt from Herbert:

What is up with the banks and the rest of the financial industry? The people running this system remind me of gangsters who manage to walk out of the courthouse with a suspended sentence and can’t wait to get back to their nefarious activities.[...]Now the industry is fighting against creation of an agency that would protect taxpayers and ordinary consumers from a similarly devastating onslaught in the future. And at the same time they are scrambling to raise credit card interest rates and all manner of exploitive fees to build a brand new superstructure of questionable profits on the backs of the taxpayers who came to their rescue.

Oh, and the banks' defense? The Bart Simpson defense, of course: "I wasn't there. I didn't do it. You can't prove anything." We can only hope that the American people and Congress know better.