Watchdog
How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy
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- £13.99
Publisher Description
Every day across America, consumers face issues with credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and student loans. When they are cheated or mistreated, all too often they hit a brick wall against the financial companies. People are fed up with being run over by big corporations, and few have the resources or expertise to fight back on their own.
It is no wonder consumers feel powerless: they are outgunned every step of the way. Since 1970, the financial industry has doubled in size. It is the biggest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, spending about $1 billion annually on campaigns and another $500 million on lobbying. The four biggest banks each now has more than $1 trillion in assets. Financial products have become a mass of fine print that consumers can hardly even read, let alone understand.
Growing problems in the increasingly one-sided finance markets blew up the economy in 2008. In the aftermath, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sharing the stories of individual consumers, Watchdog shows how the Bureau quickly became a powerful force for good, suing big banks for cheating or deceiving consumers, putting limits on predatory lenders, simplifying mortgage paperwork, and stepping in to help solve problems raised by individual consumers. It tells a hopeful story of how our system can be reformed by putting government back on the side of the people, to strengthen our families, safeguard the marketplace, and establish a new baseline of fairness in our democratic society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Ohio attorney general Cordray chronicles his six-year tenure as founding director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and argues for the independent government agency's continued relevance in this insightful and impassioned debut. Authorized by Congress as part of the Dodd-Frank bill passed in the wake of the Great Recession, the bureau was first proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was teaching bankruptcy law at Harvard Law School, and was designed to promote fairness and transparency for mortgages, credit cards, and other consumer financial products and services. When Warren proved too politically controversial to lead the new agency, President Obama tapped Cordray. He details how the bureau's "Know Before You Owe" program has sought to reduce impenetrable jargon and reveal hidden terms on mortgages, student loans, and other financial instruments, and touts its successes in recovering $12 billion for some 30 million Americans. Special bureau divisions protect vulnerable consumers including the elderly, servicemen and women, college students, and low-income families by prosecuting frauds and exploitative practices such as reverse mortgages and extortionate interest rates. Corday's vehement defense of consumer advocacy and government intervention on behalf of the 99% takes on added relevance now that his former department's "enforcement actions and regulatory work have backtracked" under the Trump administration. This well-reasoned and articulate manifesto will resonate with liberal readers.
