Consumer Law

OCC Does About Face, Says It Supports An Independent Consumer Agency

By Deepak Gupta

Shahien Nasiripour at Huffington Post has the story:

 After months of criticizing the Obama administration's proposal to create a consumer-focused agency dedicated to protecting borrowers from abusive lenders, the nation's top big-bank regulator has reversed course.

The regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, now supports an independent consumer agency -- finding itself on the opposite side of the issue from an industry it polices and powerful lawmakers it answers to, who are firmly committed to killing the proposed agency. . .

In an interview, Garsson acknowledged that the OCC had placed roadblocks in the path of the proposed consumer agency before evolving its position. One argument that was used by the OCC, the bank lobby and its friends in Congress to stir up opposition to the proposal was that the banking industry's safety and soundness, or its profitability, would inevitably clash with the consumer agency's mandate to protect borrowers, leading to situations where the consumer agency's views "would always prevail," ultimately hurting the bottom lines of the nation's roughly 8,000 banks and thereby drying up credit.

The general reaction seems to be one of skepticism about OCC's sincerity and motives, which may be largely tactical.  More at ThinkProgress and Felix Salmon, among other places.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on April 01, 2010 (boomark / email).