It's never going to be OBVIOUS or OVERT when the Congressional foxes outwit us. No one will announce suddently on CNN -- "Hey we're thieves, taking all of your money!" Senator Chris Dodd is a perfect example.
Fox: Cunny, wily, clever, deceptive
Sen. Chris Dodd's bill will weaken a critical new agency
"Just imagine that years before the subprime crisis hit, Congress had directed a federal agency to prohibit unfair or deceptive mortgage loans...
We had such an agency. It's called the Federal Reserve.
But the Fed didn't use its powers to bar bad mortgage loans until 2008, far too late to prevent the Great Recession.
... Now fast forward to today. Congress is considering changing the rules governing consumer protection. The House of Representatives has passed a bill creating an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would take over the Fed's consumer protection role. But the bill recently proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, would place the consumer financial protection function in - you guessed it - the Fed. ....
The Congress is Slick
The Dodd bill provides that the new consumer protection bureau could be overruled by a two-thirds vote of a new Financial Stability Oversight Council. Two-thirds sounds like a pretty big margin, doesn't it? Well, not so fast. The members of that council include people like the controller of the currency - whose office sued to prevent states from enforcing consumer protection laws - and the Federal Reserve chairman. Of the nine members of the council, six can be expected to side with financial institutions on consumer protection issues. These are the people, in other words, who did not prevent the current crisis from happening - and may even have enabled it.
