The news this week was pretty positive for consumers, with som big wins for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and some new data that shows the Great Recession maybe wasn’t as horrible as we originally thought.
What ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and the CFPB’s First Anniversary Have in Common
The CFPB has its first birthday this weekend, and Credit.com’s Co-Founder and Chairman Adam Levin was the first to weigh in on what this birthday means for consumers and the financial products industry.
Levin looks at the Batman-esque villains that are fighting against the CFPB and what they’re currently doing to dismantle the consumer watchdog agency as it turns 1.
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Capital One to Pay $210 Million in First CFPB Enforcement
The consumer watchdog agency scored another victory this week as it enacted its first enforcement on Capital One to the tune of $210 million for deceptive marketing.
The $210 million comprises $140 million to $150 million in restitution to customers and another $60 million in penalties to be paid to the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The marketing tactics were the work of third-party vendors employed by Capital One, though the bank ultimately took responsibility for the vendors agreed to the enforcement action.
Bernanke’s Q&A Testimony to House Panel
Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, went before Congress Wednesday for a House Financial Services Committee hearing on U.S. monetary policy.
Reuters dug into some of the highlights from the testimony, which can move the markets and have a major impact on the economic outlook for many investors. Here are the big takeaways: Bernanke isn’t worried about inflation in the U.S. or money problems in the Euro Zone. With regard to borrowers, Bernanke said the Fed is concerned about raising interest rates too soon and has no plans to until the economy is back in shape.
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Median Household Wealth Didn’t Dive as Much as Thought
AOL Real Estate recently took a look at some research done by Scott Winship at the Brookings Institution arguing that the wealth decline of the middle class isn’t as bad as the numbers make it seem, so long as it’s viewed in context.
The key to the analysis is home value. When rising home values are taken out of the wealth equation, middle-class household wealth growth has remained pretty stagnant since the 1980s. This also suggests that home values were never really correct.
Image: NS Newsflash, via Flickr
Kali Geldis Kali Geldis is Credit.com's Deputy Managing Editor. She writes about a wide range of personal finance and credit topics. She previously ran MainStreet.com, the personal finance website powered by TheStreet. She has also worked for The Wall Street Journal as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern and at The Huntington Herald-Dispatch as a reporter.
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