I appreciate what W's ownership society did for me. I chipped in with a friend (with credit almost as nonexistent as mine) on the house I had rented for 3 years which my landlord seemed ready to quickly get off her books. We knew what we were getting into, um, kinda. We knew we were getting in on the tail end of the easy credit and suspected we weren't going to "flip" the house anytime soon for that reason. At the beginning of this decade, I didn't work for a few months because I was too busy day trading that dotcom bubble until "people like me" popped it. I didn't get rich, but I "earned" a few months off to teach myself something and realized what that something was later in the decade when I told my landlord and her shady mortgage broker that they were crazy if they thought I wouldn't find somewhere else to live unless they went from 65 to 55. It's still worth about the same 3-ish years later, it was refinanced at a much lower rate before the adjustable ballooned, and I never lost money on a stock until having to unexpectedly buy a water heater last year. However, not everyone can be a great American success story by barely keeping their head above water by knowing to briefly gamble while the deck is hot.

I did not want to learn about health care last year. My first post about it was "Healthcare: Boring!" I think,so please help walk me from that housing bubble through what Bob Corker, Barney Frank, Peter Schiff and Chris Dodd are talking about to what needs to happen next. I haven't yet found what exactly a CFPA would do yet, but I can fill you in on the fight about it so far after the break

continued...

This article doesn't really explain the "user-safety rules" for credit cards, debit cards, consumer loans, payday loans, credit reporting agencies, debt collection, stored-value cards and even investment advisory and financial advisory services, to name only part of the list. All I have is a healthy suspicion that the words "financial" and "innovation" should not be coupled together often if at all; it sounds like changing the rules against people who work for dollars, so fill me in.

It sounds like the fight so far is where to put a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. After negotiations between Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby broke down, Bob Corker stepped over Shelby's toes to try to save a bipartisan deal - instead of creating another government agency, let's cram this into an existing agency and create a "less bigger" government (bend that curve, boys). Apparently, Corker proposed the Federal Reserve as somewhere to house the new regulatory authority. One response:

“The Fed had the broadest rule-making authority of anybody in the government, and yet they let that authority sit on the shelf while consumer lending practices were going to hell in a handbasket,” Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C) said in an interview. “So I think there is justified skepticism about giving the authority to the Fed.”

Peter Schiff (who is running against Chris Dodd, to keep this interesting) explains further how the Fed sits at the big money table with little regard for the people at the end of the pipeline:

“The Fed kept short term interest rates low enough so that people could qualify for a mortgage based on the teaser [interest] rate and then the government guaranteed that mortgage even though they knew going in it would ultimately end in default," he said. “Without the Fannie and Freddie guarantees and without the low interest rate there never would have been a housing bubble."

Barney Frank calls it a bad joke,

“The fact that Republicans would simultaneously be very critical of the Federal Reserve and then put the consumer protection agency [in it] shows almost contempt for the idea of consumer protection itself.”

As:

CORKER NEEDS AN ELEVATOR – POLITICO’s McGrane reports: “Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, usually happy to chat with reporters, is doing all he can to keep mum until the deal is done. ‘Anything that I say just messes things up,’ Corker told reporters during a Senate vote Tuesday, repeatedly hitting the senators-only elevator buttons – up and down both – trying to escape reporters’ relentless questioning. Yet the elevator failed to appear. ‘Is something wrong with the elevator?’ he finally asked, adding ‘I’m not trying to pull a Bunning on you.’”

Have Democrats mastered the art of negotiating against themselves?

Ok, this irritates me: 18 links in this article, "Shelby And Corker Reject Dodd’s Watered-Down Consumer Protection Proposal," but the one sentence in bold letters "The sources said Shelby and Corker objected to the rule-writing power Dodd proposed for the consumer division" has no link to information about those rule-writing powers.