Elitist Protection Consumers Don't Need

Washington Post ^ | Peter Wallison

[La Lydia]

Are consumers "protected" when they are denied the opportunity to buy products and services that are available to others? Is that what consumers want?...These are the questions raised by the Obama administration's proposal for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Traditionally, consumer protection in the United States has focused on disclosure. It has always been assumed that with adequate disclosure all consumers -- of whatever level of sophistication -- could make rational decisions about the products...No more. If the administration's plan is adopted, many consumers will be told that they cannot have particular products...because they are not sophisticated, educated or intelligent enough to understand what they have been offered.

Conservatives have argued that liberals are elitists who do not respect ordinary Americans; this legislation seems to prove it...the administration's plan would allow the educated and sophisticated elites to have access to whatever financial services they want but limit the range of products available to ordinary Americans...

So who will be able to get those more complex products and services? Not ordinary Americans, whose lack of financial sophistication will make the risks of selling to them too great for most providers. The more complex products, the ones that are better tailored to the needs of the particular consumer, will be offered only to the more sophisticated and better educated -- in other words, to the nation's elites. In this way, and for the first time in our history, the government will force a major sector of the U.S. economy to deny products and services to a large proportion of the population -- not because the products or services are inherently dangerous, like drugs or explosives, but because in the view of the Obama administration no amount of disclosure can make some Americans capable of understanding what they are buying.

[La Lydia]

Socialism marches forward under BO...

[raybbr]

I don't know about socialism but this is the kind of thing that happens when everyone that's "running" the country is a lawyer.

We really need to stop electing lawyers. They cannot think like a normal human being.