Elizabeth Warren on consumer financial protection agency

She is always worth reading and we are lucky to have her as a consumer watchdog:

“In short, the consumer credit market is broken. Real competition, the kind that permits informed choices and allows the best products to rise to the top, has disappeared. And as we know all too well, a broken credit market doesn’t hurt just consumers. Reckless lending and borrowing has jeopardized the soundness of some of our biggest banks and caused a severe economic downturn.

The agency proposed by the President would promote clear disclosure of the risks and costs for everything from mortgages and credit cards to payday loans and bank overdraft fees. It would also regulate financial products by type—home loans, say—regardless of what kind of lender issued them. The change would stitch up the hole in the current system that permits credit-card issuers to pick their regulators and lets nonbank mortgage companies grant loans with no effective oversight.”

Article:

DHL pull-out creates domino effect

Wilmington Ohio braces for more job losses as ABX Air announced today layoffs of 1,900 because DHL terminates its contract with the company as of Jan.4th.   ABX operated planes and transport services for DHL in Wilmington Ohio where 1,000 of ABX jobs will be lost.

Its too late to bail out DHL and stop them from leaving the U.S. but in looking at candidates for bailouts, DHL acts as a model.  It is a company that acts as an economic hub where its failure cascades more failure through out an industry sector and such companies should be considered candidates for federal money if one of the goals of the bailout is to insure the continued basic functioning of the economy.

Listening to Elizabeth Warren who heads the Congressional bailout oversight panel on “Fresh Air” yesterday, its unclear the Treasury Department has a bailout strategy but given the likelihood of more sectors failing throughout the economy in the coming weeks and months, they had better come up with one.

Article on ABX layoffs