I recently sat down for lunch with Dennis Kelleher, the president and chief executive of Better Markets, which Kelleher describes as “an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit that fights for the economic security and prosperity of the American people by advocating for a strong, stable and balanced financial system.” He has worthy insights regarding the current state of financial market oversight, the implementation of Dodd-Frank and how these critical issues are playing out in the election. So I thought I’d share them with my PostEverything peeps!
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JB: Is the CFPB working?
DK: If the CFPB was an Olympic competitor, it would be Michael Phelps with dozens of gold medals, only better. Phelps has been at it for more than 20 years. The CFPB had to be started from scratch just five years ago but has already made consumer protection a priority in our financial markets, as proved by an impressive record of returning more than $10 billion to 27 million ripped off American consumers. One of the key accelerants of the 2008 crash was widespread predatory, illegal and, too often, criminal conduct where consumers were routinely ripped off and fraud was a frequently a business model. That was due to very little consumer protection pre-crash, which was also highly fragmented and mostly ineffective. The CFPB was a solution to that gaping regulatory hole and it is proving itself to be an invaluable protector of financial consumers across the country.
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To read the full Washington Post article by Jared Bernstein click here.
