A united front
July 2, 2009 | federal legislation, industry | Comments (1)From today’s National Journal:
A few dozen banks, consumer finance companies, mortgage companies and other large lenders have been meeting under the auspices of the American Financial Services Association to discuss forming a coalition to fight an Obama administration proposal for creating a new consumer financial protection agency with a large regulatory mandate.
“I think everybody around the table understands the urgency of the challenge we face,” said Bill Himpler, the top lobbyist for the AFSA which has about 350 members including a number of consumer finance companies that provide 50 percent of the nation’s non-mortgage loans.
Comments»
Their website membership page says: “AFSA does not represent Payday lending or title loan companies.” Maybe this is a wrong impression, but it seems to me that they’re saying, “Go after them, but leave us alone” – which I think is short-sited since a “crackdown” on payday lenders will simply be used as a precedent for subsequent infringements on their freedom. The “reformers,” to a large extent, simply want to control more and more.
And speaking of precedents, there’s an important article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal which challenges the notion that the mortgage crisis was caused by lenders granting home loans to consumers who didn’t have the ability to repay:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
That meme is now being used, of course, as a basis for proposed APR caps and other unreasonable regulations which would ridiculously abolish or curtail payday lending.