System Failure

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing good work -- cracking down on the predatory behavior of mortgage lenders and credit card companies -- and that's why Republicans in the Senate are going all out to kill it, as explained in an excellent unsigned editorial in today's New York Times:

The bureau cannot operate without a director. Under the Dodd-Frank law, most of its regulatory powers — particularly its authority over nonbanks like finance companies, debt collectors, payday lenders and credit agencies — can be exercised only by a director. Knowing that, Republicans used a filibuster to prevent President Obama’s nominee for director, Richard Cordray, from reaching a vote in 2011. Mr. Obama then gave Mr. Cordray a recess appointment, but a federal appeals court recently ruled in another case that the Senate was not in recess at that time because Republicans had arranged for sham sessions. 

That opinion, if upheld by the Supreme Court, is likely to apply to Mr. Cordray as well, which could invalidate the rules the bureau has already enacted. The president has renominated Mr. Cordray, but Republicans have made it clear that they will continue to filibuster, using phony arguments to keep the agency from operating. 

Earlier this month, 43 Senate Republicans wrote a letter to the president, vowing to block any nominee until “key structural changes” are made, including a bipartisan commission to run the bureau instead of one director, and Congressional control of its appropriations. (It is now financed with bank fees paid to the Federal Reserve.) 

These arguments are designed solely to give Congress more opportunities to stop financial regulation. A board evenly divided between the parties would quickly reach a stalemate and become inoperative, much as the Federal Election Commission has become. Besides, board members can be filibustered as easily as a director.

Wherever one turns there is evidence of corruption, so much so that we don't even see corruption anymore. Whether it is the manufacture of metal hips, the use of lithium-ion batteries in a new jet, the corporate practices of major financial institutions, the exorbitant cost of getting a college education, or the pay-to-play reality of our politics, every major component of society appears to be corrupt. We are witnessing system failure; and because of plutocratic capture very little if nothing is being done to address it.