Senator Elizabeth Warren in committee
Senate Republicans held a Banking Committee hearing today to talk about why we should roll back the rules on mortgages and credit cards because they’re just too costly for the banks. One of their witnesses, Leonard Chanin, had helped lead the Federal Reserve division that refused to regulate deceptive mortgages — including the subprime lending that helped spark the crisis.
All the better. The whole idea of sub-prime mortgages was bad from the start. And credit cards are one of the great evils of modern civilization. Making both harder to get would be a Good Thing.
Warren:
If they did not have sub-prime loans, the self employed could not get mortgages. Furthermore there is nothing wrong with a credit card. There is something wrong with Usury.
It’s been absolutely dismaying to me for the last seven years that Dem candidates for Congress, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee haven’t campaigned on this issue.
All they had to do to hold their own in the 2014 elections was to highlight the financial industry regulatory laws that the Dem-controlled Congress passed in 2009-10, including laws that prohibit such things as overdraft fees for debit-card use and the limits placed on the fees that Visa and Mastercard can charge businesses (including small businesses) to process transactions, and Dodd-Frank’s creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other parts of Dodd-Frank. And show that the Repubs repeatedly try to repeal these laws.
Instead, the focused entirely on abortion and other culture wars things. As they have for decades, until, finally, now.
Mortgage backed securities are a joke but many fools still buy them. You would have thought that the Enron debacle big red flag would have been enough. No we still have the big six banks committing felonies but never no arrests. If you like book cooking mortgage derivatives so much I will steer you to Blackstone’s cook book. It is said the HRC owes Larry Fink the top job at the Treasury. The revolving door is still live and well on Wall St. Why do you stink that the Glass-Stiegall has not been re enacted yet? As for hedge funds take a look back a few days at Wallstreetonparade.com and a grand expose on them all for HCR to carry their mail.