Elizabeth Warren to be appointed White House 'consumer czar' … The White House will announce Friday that Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren will be appointed to be an assistant to the president and oversee the creation of a new consumer financial protection bureau. The move is largely seen as a compromise to avoid a potentially bruising Senate confirmation battle over Warren, who was the first to call for the creation of such a bureau. Warren has become a heroine among many Democrats and unions for her willingness to openly criticize investment banks for their lending practices in her role as the head of a congressional oversight panel overseeing the government's bailout of troubled financial firms. Warren's advocates asserted strong pressure on the White House to name her to be the first person to lead the agency. But many Republicans and Wall Street opposed her nomination, arguing that her overly aggressive views on regulation of financial firms could lead to a contraction of credit. – Washington Post
Dominant Social Theme: US Consumers will get even better protection now.
Free-Market Analysis: There is so much that is strange about this consumer financial protection bureau that it is not easy to know where to start. First of all transactions between someone borrowing money and someone lending it do not strike us as "consumption." We think of consumption as the simple purchase of a service or good. An additional dominant social theme might be: "It is the declared duty of the US federal government to protect you from engaging in transactions with lenders that you might regret."
The power elite's fear-based promotions and solutions grow stranger in our view. Wherever one looks there is weirdness. Homeland Security is installing full-body scanners that take and store naked pictures – but denies that they do. The Obama administration passes a health care bill that mandates people pay for insurance whether they want it or not, even though such a law is likely unconstitutional. The US Federal Reserve prints trillions of paper dollars to try to stave off the collapse of the Western economy (which it has caused) and then pretends it is business as usual. And most recently, we find there is plausible evidence that the president of the United States himself, Barack Obama, is actually a CIA undercover agent.
There is much more of course. There are plenty of questions about 9/11, especially since members of the Commission itself disavowed some of its conclusions; yet there seems no appetite in Congress to review this horrible tragedy in order to provide a valid historical road map. Several US presidential administrations have pursued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet the rationale for these wars has never been clear and continually resists clarity. British Petroleum blows out a deep-drilling oil rig and pollutes the Gulf, but the Obama administration acts unconcerned about it and even seems to put obstacles in the way of a clean-up.
We could go on and on. Global warming is nonsense; the idea that people are polluting the earth by breathing is nothing short of insane. The war on non-existent terror continues in America and around the world, yet never have so many be so frightened at such great expense with so little to show for it. The mainstream media doesn't see it this way, of course. But the entire country is somehow in the grip of a Nikolai Gogol farce – one that resembles the "Inspector General," where nothing is as it seems and people's fear and greed are relentlessly exploited.
Now there is to be a "Czar" in Washington who will protect people from unscrupulous lenders. This is in fact a new kind of crime. The idea that one can be the victim while being lavished with money is a bit bizarre. Sure, there are always usurious, mafia-type lenders on the outskirts of the private sector, but we were not aware that the average mortgage company broke your legs if you didn't pay up.
The whole idea of yet another agency – another watchdog – to make sure the average consumer is not taken advantage of is absurd in the context of what is taking place in America and throughout the West, in fact. It is of course central banking that creates the tremendous booms and busts that the West suffers from. The Great Recession of the late 2000s is the end result of a century's worth of the over-printing of currency. And yet the same power elite that runs the printing presses is now demanding "austerity" from the communities and societies that were fooled by the mountains of paper money thrust into the economy.
The United States does not need another regulatory body to oversee its financial services. What gives anyone the idea that the federal government is competent at this sort of thing? The Pentagon, before 9/11, mislaid some US$2 trillion in funding according to then defense chairman Donald Rumsfeld, but that money has never been traced. Numerous states are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and California has taken to issuing IOUs for payment. And yet somehow the administration and Congress have determined that they will now make it an obligation of the federal government to protect individuals from fraud inherent in financial products.
In a free market, financial services are part of a natural ebb and flow of transactions. An individual involved in a financial agreement with another likely does not think he has purchased a good or service. He has made a financial arrangement and is obligated to the counterparty to honor it. Calling this process a "product" and suggesting it is in need of government regulation is actually a kind of promotion itself – a relabeling of an individual contract.
Let us see if we can summarize the above. The government, via a private banking cartel, created a terrible recession that cost millions their homes and savings. Those elites that sit behind government then decided this same suffering population needed "protection" from the ravages its central banking economy caused. Accordingly, private agreements were redefined as products and the promotion began. Gogol anyone?
