Clarification Appended: June 30, 2011
Here’s some good news for consumers who feel themselves trampled by soulless banking and credit giants: on July 21, a new consumer-protection agency will open its doors in Washington, with the mission of making everything from mortgage documents to credit statements fairer and easier to understand and generally giving the little guy more power against the financial corporate juggernauts.
Here’s the bad news: it’s not clear that President Obama will be able to appoint anyone to run it.
It’s an unexpected twist to a larger Obama policy achievement that has been slowly unraveling in recent months. Last July, Obama signed a sweeping bill, passed by the Democratic Congress, that overhauled Washington’s regulation of Wall Street banks and other financial-services companies whose greed and risk taking helped wreck the U.S. economy. The idea was to prevent another financial crisis through tighter rules and closer supervision. A year later, Obama is fighting off emboldened Republicans who — backed by Wall Street money and lobbyists — are trying to gut the measure. The battle is raging mostly out of public view, in the realm of regulators and budgetmakers.
