Business for Shared Prosperity

By Ryan McCarthy
Huffington Post, 3/10/10

The opponents of the Obama administration's proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency apparently have very little competition in the Google AdWords space.

As you'll see by the below screen shot, contextual ads for the term "CFPA" have already been snatched up by consumer agency opponents. The agency, first proposed by Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the bailout, would protect consumers against deceptive credit card deals and misleading mortgage agreements while also acting as a bulwark against some of the more exotic financial products.

Here are the ads: [Click on url at end of story]

So who's buying up these Google ads? Stop The CFPA, the top result, is named as a "product of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." The Chamber opposes the agency because it believes it will "reduce access to credit for America's consumers and businesses" and argues that creating another regulatory agency will only add to government bureaucracy. Banks and payday lenders oppose the agency because it would impose strict limits on some of their most profitable products.

As we noted last month, however, the business community does not uniformly oppose the creation of a robust consumer agency. A growing number of small business owners have backed the agency on the grounds that it would protect them from unfair credit card practices, and a host of local Chambers of Commerce have joined the organization Business For Shared Prosperity in calling for an independent agency.

(No word on whether or not the Center For Professional Advancement -- a training and accreditation organization for technical trades and the second-highest Google search result for "CFPA," actually supports the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.)

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/consumer-agency-opponents_n_492...