Banks Want Free Field That Could Lead To Another Real Estate Bubble-Burst Cycle

: Image by wallyg via Flickr

Think the big banks would be at least a little grateful to American taxpayers for bailing them out with their money? Yeah, right!

A published report the other day says these “too big to fail” institutions are doing everything in their taxpayer fueled power to head off a proposal by President Obama for a consumer protection agency.

The proposed agency would, among other things, regulate home loans.

Did I say “regulate?” Now, there’s a word banks don’t like very much.

But regulation was exactly what was needed–stricter regulation–when banks and other lending institutions were helping create the worst economic disaster in this country since the Great Depression.

The New York Times quotes the president of the American Bankers Association as saying, “It’s going to be a huge fight. This agency would have broad powers that go beyond every consumer law that has ever been enacted.”

Well, that sort of sounds like a good thing to me!

The fact is, the banks, and many real estate brokers, have and are getting away with fiscal murder….and, they know it. That is why they are fighting so hard to head off anything that might get in their way of business as usual.

We may or may not be at the very beginning of a modest,at best, real estate recovery—declines in home prices in some places are slowing–and prices actually are up in cities like Denver, apparently.

But lending institutions can’t be allowed to simply pretend that nothing really bad has gone down…that would only set everyone up for yet another real estate bubble followed by another real estate burst.

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Article Author: Charles Feldman

Charles has written 179 articles for us.
Visit Charles's Website: http://www.thefeldmanblog.com

Charles is currently reporting for KNX Radio in Los Angeles, is the co-author of the book No Time To Think, and can be found commenting about the news on his blog, The Feldman Blog, as well as on The Huffington Post.