When consumers find themselves strapped for cash, they often turn to credit cards to bail themselves out. As a lot of people in Texas have learned in recent years, this can start a person down a frustrating road that offers no possible hope of debt relief and recovery.
For many, bankruptcy may be a viable option. For others, the possibility of accommodation with creditors is open. For still others, the consolidation of debts might be the solution. Each can be looked at with a judicious eye with the help of an experience attorney to decide, and a decision made that offers the greatest sense of confidence that there will be an end to the tunnel and that there will be daylight at the end of it.
But some politicians are on record, complaining that powers wielded by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are too broad and too dangerous. They say the powers now threaten to improperly limit American’s access to credit and could hurt the nation’s efforts to recover economically.
Two of the most outspoken critics of the CFPB are the chairmen of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the Subcommittee on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The two Republican lawmakers say they’ve been tracking the CFPB since it started operating in 2011 and they don’t like what they’re seeing.
They say decision-making power is too centralized in the hands of one man, director Richard Cordray. Besides not liking that Cordray got his job without the consent of the Senate, the two House members say he’s single-handedly rewriting rules that have led banks to tighten their standards for extending credit to consumers and small businesses. They say that’s credit the economy needs to grow.
Regardless of which side of the argument one falls, the reality is that consumer debt, in all its forms, is a real concern. Those facing issues should not be deterred from protecting their rights through whatever viable option that may be available to them.
Source: Mortgage News Daily, “House Committee Chairs Blast CFPB’s “Virtually Limitless Power,” Jann Swanson, Dec. 26, 2012