Elizabeth Warren's "Financial Product Safety Commission"

Senator Durbin (D, IL) is soon expected to introduce legislation which would create a federal “Financial Product Safety Commission” (FPSC). This concept was originally proposed by Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School who was a previous guest on the Legal Broadcast Network. The Financial Products Safety Commission would be solely dedicated to consumer safety. It would review financial products, “eliminate the hidden tricks that make some of them far more dangerous than others, and ensure that none post unacceptable risks to consumers.”

The FPSC would be novel in at least two important ways: 1.) right now, there are many agencies who deal with consumer protectionand their patchwork of regulations leave huge gaps, and 2.) these agencies only secondarily responsible to consumers per se. Their prime concern is the stability of banks and other financial institutions – and, apparently, they aren’t too good at getting that right either.

Source: Americans For Fairness in Lending

Scott Drake discusses the idea with Jan Schlichtmann

Comments

[James Morgan - Puritan Financial Advisor]

Their prime concern is the stability of banks and other financial institutions.