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Learn more about the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (also known as Dodd-Frank) signed into law by President Obama a year ago today. Watch to find out more about the consumer protections and long term structural changes put in place by the historic act, and get the facts about the lobbyists and special interests who are trying to undermine it.

Sherrod Brown

By Sherrod Brown
U.S. Senator, D-Ohio

Progressives are an impatient bunch. We fight for people who have waited too long already — for health care, for educational opportunity, for jobs to keep them in the middle class.

But for generations, conservatives have appealed to fear to protect the privileged and preserve the status quo — fear of immigrants, fear of diversity, fear of big government. For conservatives in 2010, it’s easy:

“Stop.”

“No.”

“Repeal.”

Meanwhile, for more than a century — in churches and temples, in union halls and neighborhood centers, in the streets and at the ballot box — progressives have moved the country forward. Progressives brought us minimum wage and Social Security in the 1930s, civil rights and Medicare in the 1960s, and health care and Wall Street reform in 2010.

Opponents of these accomplishments — some of society’s most privileged and well-entrenched interest groups — have not changed much. The John Birch Society of 1965 has bequeathed its fervor and extremism to the Tea Party of 2010.

History tells us that rage on the right should not be confused with populism. The far right attacks government regulation as it feeds Wall Street and the insurance companies. It rails against government spending for the least privileged as it lavishes tax cuts favoring the most privileged.

No one should be surprised over what has happened in the last 18 months:

•We passed health care reform, so the insurance companies are coming after us at election time. (more…)

Zach Carter

Zach Carter
Economics Editor, AlterNet; Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

A lot of CNBC anchors do not seem to understand how regulation works. In fact, it appears that the network’s hosts don’t really grasp how basic economic competition works. If you’ve tuned into the business channel this summer, chances are you’ve heard its star reporters pushing the ridiculous bank lobbyist mantra that new consumer protections will actually make life harder for consumers. It’s simply not true. Wall Street reforms aimed at credit card billing practices and overdraft fees are already protecting the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens all over the country.

Bankers don’t like consumer protections for a reason: they’ve been able to make a lot of money in recent years by gouging consumers and tricking them into paying absurd fees. So financiers have dispatched CEOs and lobbyists to CNBC to make the case that their predatory profits are actually good for consumers. Here’s how the perverse argument goes: If you force banks to stop abusing some of their customers, banks have to make their money by charging higher prices to all of their customers. The argument flies in the face of basic facts about how markets work, but even if it was essentially true, the banker dystopia looks much better for consumers than the past decade’s status quo.

Take a look at Maria Bartiromo’s obsequious July 22 interview with BB&T CEO Kelly King (who personally took home over $5 million last year, with the economy in the doldrums). You can also find Wells Fargo CFO Howard Atkins making a similar case on July 21, and megabank lobbyist Steve Bartlett pushing the agenda on July 20 (to CNBC’s credit, the anchors push back a bit against Bartlett late in the interview). From Bartiromo’s King interview:

MB: So many people have said the fee business is a profitable and a substantial one for so many banks, whether it’s overdraft fees or any other fees. And if we have rules that they won’t be able to charge that, they’re going to find some other place to put those fees.

KK: Well that’s right. You know Maria, we have to cover our costs . . . we simply have to find a way to recover our costs, which ultimately means that there will be increased charges to the consumer. (more…)

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

There are rotten apples in every industry. Or perhaps I should say rotten eggs.

One especially rotten egg is Jack DeCoster, whose commercial egg agribusiness, which goes under the homey title “Wright County Egg,” headquartered in Galt, Iowa, sends eggs all over the country under many different brands. Those eggs have now laid low thousands of Americans with salmonella poisoning, and may well infect thousands more.

DeCoster is recalling 380 million eggs sold since mid-May. Another commercial egg company, also headquartered in Iowa, and in which DeCoster is a major investor, is recalling hundreds millions more.

It’s not clear how rotten eggs are recalled. They’re not like Toyotas. They’re already in our food supply.

But this is only the beginning of the story. (more…)