Yesterday, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley became the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat last won by Ted Kennedy. She will face her Republican opponent in a special election on January 19th. We're not saying it pushed her over the edge with voters, but just a couple weeks back, she, along with Elizabeth Warren, wrote a piece for TNR calling on Congress to pass the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) Act of 2009. They argued that the agency would bring desperately needed regulation and transparency to the credit markets:
Healthy markets depend on full information between parties to contracts, but lenders have systematically hidden the costs and risks of consumer credit products while burying a wide assortment of tricks and traps in the fine print. The result is that consumers can’t compare the costs of different products or distinguish safe lenders from risky lenders.
We recommend you read the whole piece.