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March 20, 2009
On Leno: Obama opposes exploding toasters and mortgages, supports consumer credit reforms
At a rally Wednesday in Costa Mesa, CA and on Jay Leno again last night, President Obama expressed support for both a credit card bill of rights and a Financial Product Safety Commission. If you watch the Leno video and slide the bar down to 14:20 or so, you'll hear this:
The President: When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there's a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there's no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you're going to be protected. So this is -- the need for getting back to some common sense regulations -- there's nothing wrong with innovation in the financial markets. We want people to be successful; we want people to be able to make a profit. Banks are critical to our economy and we want credit to flow again. But we just want to make sure that there's enough regulatory common sense in place that ordinary Americans aren't taken advantage of, and taxpayers, after the fact, aren't taken advantage of. (Applause.) We testified in favor of the Credit Card Bill of Rights yesterday. We are backing Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and others in support of a Financial Product Safety Commission, S. 566.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at March 20, 2009 09:40 AM
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