President Obama Highlights Tough New Consumer Protections

WHITEHOUSE.GOV ^ | June 20, 2009 | n/a

[Cindy]

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdm-pZm8hoA

“Weekly Address: Financial Reform to Protect Consumers”
(Added June 19, 2009)

[Tarpon]

LOL -0- This guy is a regular schuck and jive act 24/7

Polls are connected to the economy.

[Venturer]

Shuck and Jive is all that is.

[Tarpon]

Yep, polls are connected to economy, and the economy is connected to the unemployment rate. And by now near everyone on the country knows someone who has been laid off in the last months.

No hat and cane dance act is going to change that anymore.

[television is just wrong]

as usual no substance, no jobs just higher taxes for the people left working, yea that is gonna help the recovery.

[Son House]

Obama explained the necessity of his proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency

=

Everything will cost the Consumers more

[PORD]

Consumer fraud...like his very existance, like the whole bailout, like ACORN, etc, etc, etc!

[reg45]

No one will be allowed to buy anything that is not approved by the Consumer Czar.

[nathanbedford]

Evidently the Obama administration is setting out to prohibit parties from negotiating and making contracts themselves. This will now be done by the federal government, more precisely, by an agency staffed, of course, by unelected apparatchiks who will dictate the terms on which it will be permissible for mortgagors and mortgagee's to do business with each other.

So the parties will not be permitted to settle the terms between themselves. This will be done by rules. Obama has already warned of these rules "will be enforced." It is reassuring to know that the rules will ban "unfair practices" otherwise run might be at risk of arbitrary, bureaucratic control over private commerce. (Emphasis supplied)

The president in his announcement does not tell us how the constitutional responsibility of the Congress of the United States to make laws can be constitutionally handed off to unelected bureaucrats. Nor does he tell us the standards upon which practices will be determined to be "unfair." He does not tell us if the Congress of the United States will set the standards or simply abandon the field to apparatchiks.

In view of the Supreme Court's pusillanimity in fleeing from the Chrysler bankruptcy matter, one can have no grounds to hope that the Supreme Court will intervene to save our constitutional right of contract or the doctrine of separation of powers, and much less the federal principle that states should control real property transactions, and even less that the court would have the slightest concern for the preservation of capitalism.

Here is the relevant portion of the president's comments justifying my criticism that the federal government is in the process of prohibiting parties from entering into their own contracts (emphasis supplied):

This new agency will have the responsibility to change that. It will have the power to set tough new rules so that companies compete by offering innovative products that consumers actually want – and actually understand. Those ridiculous contracts – pages of fine print that no one can figure out – will be a thing of the past. You’ll be able to compare products – with descriptions in plain language – to see what is best for you. The most unfair practices will be banned. The rules will be enforced.

[FES0844]

Consumer fraud???? He should concentrate on Medicaid & Medicare billing fraud $$$$

[babyfreep]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Thank you.

[PGalt]

We have enough “rules” Barack. Criminals don’t play by no steeenkin’ “rules”. Identify the culprits and their schemes necessary to make these new “rules” and how they broke the existing “rules”. You won’t. You can’t. Put that smoke in your lungs. Quit blowing it up our rear ends.

[Vaduz]

Americans who took on too much debt and took out loans they simply could not afford.And Obama wants to protect such actions that’s Obama all right.

[keats5]

Oh goody, a new government agency to further regulate the private sector “for our own good.”

[keats5]

Is it just me, or is Obama systematically coming out with daily sweeping legislative and administrative proposals, intermixed with a bunch of inconsequential stuff and PR overload.

He remind me of a 16 year old guy who wants to buy some condoms, but he throws in a bunch of other groceries hoping to distract the cashier.

[shalom aleichem]

True. Obama is hitting us with shock ‘n awe so we miss the real important and nasty stuff he has in store, such as total control.

I feel so “protected” as a consumer. I went to get some silver (aluminum) paint for my metal shed roof and was told EPA does allow us to sell it anymore. Then I went to get some of the good oil stain I used to use for the decks and was told the same thing. Darn EPA again. Are all of our frame structures just supposed to rot away so we can save the ozone layer? Isn’t the ozone layer OK now?

[keats5]

I wish our kids could know the freedom we grew up with. We used to ride around “untied” in the back of pickup trucks. We could sit in the front bench seat of the car with our families and not feel like a pariah. We could work for the locals when we were 12 for candy money, and never fear riding our bikes alone to the corner store to buy it.

We used to stand up to bullies with the now almost extinct retort, “Sez who? It’s a free country!”

[HighlyOpinionated]

"Useful" and "Necessity" are "The Tyrant's Plea." C.S. Lewis

[Caipirabob]

Is this a Presidential adminstration or a comedy act? It certainly can't be the former and if it's the latter, it's not funny.

Obama is risking marginalizing himself to the point of ridicule. I can't see that even his own party will be able to politically associate themselves to him if he continues pushing snake-oil legislation initiatives on the people during an economic crisis that he has only made worse through either his incompetence or planned obsolescence.