The Philadelphia Inquirer ran this excellent opinion piece on August 3. Here’s an excerpt:
Credit card and mortgage consumers need help to level the playing field.
By Adam Benforado
The $3-trillion-a-year consumer financial-services industry wants you to play a game with them, one on one. Well, technically, it will be one of you against their stable of thousands of lawyers, business strategists, and marketing experts. But who’s counting?
The stakes are the financial well-being of your family and the economic stability of the nation.
Oh, and they would like you to agree to play without rules or a referee. What do you say?
It sounds pretty ludicrous, but that is exactly what the credit card and mortgage companies are suggesting as they line up against President Obama’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would be designed to ensure the safety of financial products while encouraging competition and innovation.
The consumer financial-services industry is hoping to keep the playing field just as it is, with a regulatory structure full of gaps, contradictions, and inefficiencies. That allows large companies to get away with dirty tackles and cheap shots while running up the score on the American public.