Sen. Dodd’s Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection can get the job done if it isn’t weakened further, writes Pat Garofalo.
Banks are still looking to get rich quick. Reckless risk-taking should be discouraged by limiting executive pay.
When the Obama administration formally unveiled its proposal for creating a financial consumer protection agency last week, Scott Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable, the financial industry's lobbying arm, expressed concern that the new agency would set not a ceiling but a floor for consumer protection rules. "States are encouraged to go further to provide additional consumer protections, which will create a patchwork of 50 state regimes," he said.