Small Business Owners Press For Strong CFPA To Defend Them From Wall Street

[laughingliberal]

he U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its GOP allies have been busy warning that an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency will hurt small business -- but a growing number of small business owners are saying just the opposite.

When asked to speak for themselves, they say a strong CFPA is the only thing that can protect them from the predatory practices of the corporate titans represented by the Chamber.

Small business owners, after all, frequently wind up using personal credit cards to cover their expenses. Consequently, they're often victimized by the kinds of deceptive interest rates and fee structures that the CFPA could do away with or otherwise regulate. Small business owners may have created two out of three net new jobs in the past decade and a half, but they say that big businesses are strangling their finances and killing those jobs.<snip>

<snip> Some 200 small business owners and leaders of small-business advocacy organizations throughout the United States have signed the petition, which urges the Senate to include an independent consumer protection agency in its financial regulatory reform legislation. Additionally, two-thirds of the 1,200-plus business owners polled by the progressive small-business group Main Street Alliance favor the creation of the proposed CFPA. The consumer agency made it into the House regulatory reform bill that passed in November, albeit with numerous exemptions for favored industries.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/10/small-business-owners-pre_n_457369.html

Would love to see this group grow and get some attention. The Republicans have, disingenuously, used "small business" as their excuse for enacting the very policies that favored big guys and were destroying small business.

[pleah]

1. K&R