Consumer Financial Protection Agency: Big Brother Protecting You to Death

When I first learned to drive as a teenager, my mother let me take the wheel on trips to the local grocery store. She was there in the passenger seat, arms flailing every time a squirrel or a piece of sagebrush came across the road, her left forearm pressing my chest back against the seat. It was instinct. She wanted to brace me for the impact of a crash. The only problem was that I needed both arms free to keep the van from crashing in the first place. While I appreciated my mother’s concern, I hated the thought that she might protect me to death.

Which is the same attitude every American should have when it comes to the new consumer financial protection laws President Barack Obama and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) want to impose on businesses.

Obama first proposed the idea of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) in June as a part of his grand plan to overhaul Wall Street regulations. But it has come under considerable attack recently for fear it would smother businesses and end up hurting consumers. As I write for Reason Online, in its current form, the CFPA will pile on burdensome new rules, restrict innovation, hurt small businesses, increase the cost of doing business, spawn a massive bureaucracy, and create severe conflicts between state and federal law. Frank’s proposed version would even allow the new agency to write and enforce laws beyond the scope of existing legislative authority.

Read the whole piece at reason.com here.

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