If anyone knows the dangers of plastic, it’s reality TV star Heidi Montag who never met a credit cred or cosmetic surgery procedure she didn’t like. But paying for those implants, injections and tucks can be distressing because “with hidden fees and standard interest rate increases, that $11,000 jawline can end up costing you an upwards of $50,000,” Montag deadpans in a video she made for our partners at Americans for Financial Reform.

The answer, as even Heidi knows, is the creation of a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  Now’s the time to call your senators and let them know that you’re fed up with abusive banking practices. Wall Street lobbyists are working hard to kill financial reform (Click here to take action).

The Montag video is one of a series urging Congress to pass banking reforms, including one we posted earlier featuring an all-star cast of Saturday Night Live presidential impersonators.

You’ve been hearing a lot from us about the need for a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to rein in Wall Street’s predatory practices and help prevent another financial crisis. In the video above, now you can hear about it from Presidents Clinton, both Bushes, Reagan, Carter and Ford as they urge Obama to fight for an independent watchdog agency with teeth (played by an all-star cast of Saturday Night Live funnymen, including my personal favorite, Dana Carvey as Bush Sr.).

Regardless of how you feel about the respective legacies of any of these former Commanders in Chief, the video’s worth checking out for a laugh (and, of course, for an extra boost of motivation to call your senators!).

(Oh, and if you didn’t notice, the number to call your senators at the end of the video — (866) 544-7573 — is the same one we have been urging activists to call for the National Call-In for Financial Reform this week.)

Weissman

A consumer financial protection agency in the Federal Reserve is an oxymoron.

Wall Street and the big banks crashed the financial system with abusive mortgage loans, have gouged consumers with outrageous overdraft fees and feasted on rip-off credit card charges. If after all that, Congress fails to establish an independent consumer protection agency, then we will know that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was indeed right when he said the banks own the Senate.

A functioning consumer protection agency could have averted many of the worst abuses of the past decade, including those that worsened the financial crash. That is, a working consumer protection agency not only would have protected consumers from abusive banking practices, but it would have protected the financial system itself from abusive banking practices.

The Fed had its chance. It could have acted. It should have acted. It was beseeched to act. It failed. Why in the world would we locate a fresh effort at consumer protection in an agency that so clearly evidenced its hostility to consumer protection when it mattered?

This is the same Fed that for years ignored pleas from consumer advocates to crack down on predatory lending and other abusive practices, long before the financial crisis hit. This is the same Fed that took three enforcement actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007, at the height of the bubble and its attendant abuses. This is the same Fed that failed to enact rules to stop predatory mortgage practices until 2008 – after the housing market had collapsed – even though it was granted authority to issue such rules in 1994. This is the same Fed that failed to regulate abusive credit card practices until 2008, after Congress threatened to take away its power to do so.

A fresh start at consumer protection should establish a new agency that has:

• full rulemaking and supervision authority;

• full enforcement authority;

• independence;

• a stable, sufficient budget; and

• authority to establish a federal floor of consumer protection, not a ceiling.

Those are the tools and powers needed to protect consumers from a financial industry whose talent for “innovation” seems primarily directed at innovating new ways to rip off consumers.

Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen.

Recently, a financial industry lobbyist said because Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) is retiring, he is now free to “dance with the special interests that brought him to the dance in the first place. Us, his loyal donors in the banking community.”

Nearly 46,000 concerned Americans joined Public Citizen and our partners in saying, “No way!” Dodd is now free to do the right thing and hold the banksters accountable.

Americans for Financial Reform, Credo, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Media and Democracy helped collect signatures. Together, we urged Dodd to keep up the fight for significant financial reform to rein in Wall Street and prevent another economic crisis. In particular, we called on Dodd to ensure there is a strong and independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Here is Dodd’s official response to our petition:

Thank you for taking the time to voice your support for strong consumer protections.

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, our country saw an across-the-board failure to protect consumers. That’s why I’m working hard to pass strong financial reforms that will hold Wall Street accountable and prevent another financial crisis.

Protecting consumers by cracking down on abuses and deceptive practices will be a key element of this bill. Keep up the good work, and keep fighting for consumers.

Meanwhile, the banksters on Wall Street who blindly drove our economy off a cliff continue to lobby as hard as ever against real reform. Join the National Call-In for Real Reform next week (Mon. March 1 – Thu. March 4).

Check out our letter to Dodd and photos of our petitition delivery.

Next week, Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is expected to introduce legislation that is the result of months of bipartisan negotiation.

But will it be the real reform the people are demanding, or will it be the weak half-measure the banks are lobbying for?

Add your name to our petition urging Senator Dodd to fight for real reform!  

At a recent hearing, Dodd said, “Too many people in the [financial] industry have decided to invest in an army of lobbyists, whose only mission is to kill the commonsense financial reforms that we are working so hard up here to try to achieve.”

Tell Dodd to keep standing up to the big bank lobbyists! We need financial policies that put the American people before Wall Street’s profits.

After publicly sparring in the fall, the White House and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are trying to make up.

In an extraordinary exchange of letters written after last week’s State of the Union address, Chamber President Tom Donohue and President Barack Obama agreed to disagree on some issues and work together where they can. 

Collusion between big corporations and the White House? Isn’t that what helped bring on the Great Recession? We’re thinking we need more coziness between Wall Street and Washington like we need another dive in our economy – or more policies that line the pockets of big oil and big pharma at our expense. Even before the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the Chamber was lobbying heavily and buying ads to defeat efforts to address the very health care, climate change and financial crises they helped to create.   

Now the Chamber has a new weapon – the right to unlimited spending to defeat or elect candidates.  With this new weapon pointed at members of Congress who have supported the president’s progressive policies, this change in Obama’s tone should come as no surprise.

True, President Obama’s changed attitude toward the corporate lobbying machine could very well be another manifestation of his professed desire to find agreement in the middle, and to be a unifier. But let’s face it – if you’re in the middle of a heated discussion, and your opponent is handed a loaded weapon, your tone is probably going to change.

The threat looms, and the Chamber doesn’t even have to say the words, “We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.”

Weissman

They’re back at the trough. The folks at AIG don’t get it. Do they expect to be congratulated for taking $100 million in bonus payments instead of $110 million or $120 million? Payment of the bonuses is justified as contractually required but the government-owned AIG can honor such contractual terms only because the firm was rescued with $180 billion in taxpayer supports.

This latest outrage comes on top of reports that emerged in recent months that AIG employees en masse reneged on promises made last year to return bonus payments.

The refrain that bonus payments must be made to retain “talent” doesn’t even qualify as a cruel joke. This is the so-called talent that presided over the collapse of AIG and cost taxpayers countless billions.

Congress is not helpless on this issue, and has no excuse for failing to take action. When the AIG bonus scandal broke, there was serious talk of imposing a 90 percent tax on the bonus payments. Once fooled, it is time for Congress to return to this remedy.

AIG, of course, is only the most egregious example of bonus abuse. It is time for Congress to adopt an across-the-board windfall bonus tax on Wall Street and the financial sector. The place to start is by taking up the Responsible Banking Act, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen.

Earlier this week, Public Citizen, along with the Center for Economic Policy Research and WallStreetWatch.org, hosted a panel debate on the pros and cons of a speculation tax on financial services. We’ve called for such a tax as an important reform needed to rein in Wall Street’s reckless behavior. Now, bills before Congress would create the tax as a way to raise as much as $100 billion a year in revenue, while also deterring the harmful churning of stocks and financial instruments.

In the video above, economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, discusses why we need a speculation tax. To view the entire debate, which also included Public Citizen President Robert Weissman, University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin, Gerogetown University Professor Jim Angel and George Sauter, Vanguard Group’s managing director and chief investment officer, visit our Vimeo page.

From the Courant’s Capitol Watch blog (emphasis added):

“What a terrible day for American democracy,” U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd said in a statement. “With this 5-4 decision, a deeply divided Supreme Court has essentially given corporations free rein to drown out the voices of the American people, rejecting the sacred democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ By overturning the century-old cornerstone of our campaign finance laws, they have opened the floodgates of direct corporate spending, allowing our political discourse and the legislative process to be further corrupted by huge corporations.  I intend to pursue every legislative option – including a constitutional amendment to allow Congress and the states to put appropriate limits on campaign spending – to restore the trust and voice of the American people.”

Bold words, Senator Dodd. We hope you join our battle to solve this crisis in our democracy.

Meanwhile, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) made some sobering statements about the possible impact of the Supreme Court decision on financial reform: “Think about the biggest firms on Wall Street, at a time when we are trying to hold them accountable, being able to take money and defeat those who call greater for transparency and accountability on Wall Street.”

Van Hollen continues: “This is a scandalous decision. This is a decision that equates, for the purposes of expending monies in elections, says that corporations equal individuals. I think it is an un-American decision and think that when the American people understand what this radical decision has meant, they will be even more furious and concerned about special interest influence in politics than they are today. ”

From the letter:

Americans for Financial Reform urges you to reject the Chamber’s false rhetoric and to enthusiastically support the CFPA [Consumer Financial Protection Agency]. Like Chamber ads aimed at killing health care reform, which National Journal last week reported were secretly funded by the nation’s biggest health insurers, we believe the nation’s largest financial services firms are behind the Chamber’s multi-million dollar attack on the CFPA. […]  Firms like Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services, and M&I Bank are the Chamber’s real constituency and they are among the Chamber members the CFPA would actually regulate.

Meanwhile, the Chamber is also doing its best to frighten small business owners into falling in line behind Big Business.

Lawrence Summers, Director of the President’s National Economic Council, called the Chamber’s scare ads “the financial regulatory equivalent to the death panel ads being run with respect to health care.” After the House eliminated any doubt by explicitly exempting merchants, retailers and other non-financial businesses from CFPA oversight, the Chamber simply edited its ads to say the CFPA would hurt small business by restricting access to credit. 

If there ever were any questions about which side the Chamber is on – the public or the Wall Street fat cats – Chamber CEO Tom Donohue cleared them up last week when he defended the huge bonuses being paid to the executives of the TARP banks who took our economy to the brink of collapse. He likened the executives to “mad scientists” whose brilliance justifies their outsized pay.

Neither Congress nor the American public should have to accept the Chamber’s misleading and self-serving misrepresentations. We need to fix our economy and our financial system so that it works for the American public. The people are struggling, Congress. We need financial reform to create jobs and keep people in their homes. We hope you are listening.  

Flickr photo by purpleslog.