A little while back, a reader asked me, “what is in the [financial reform] bill that affects us little people?” I gave only a very cursory answer, but the first item on my list was the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. By overseeing the loans and financial products companies sell to individual consumers, the CFPB has the potential to do more to change the way Americans interact day-to-day with their banks and other financial service providers than any other portion of the legislation.
Our colleague Stephen Gandel has a very useful rundown of six areas in which the CFPB could make a big difference: student loans, credit scores, overdraft protection, payday loans, reverse mortgages and debt reduction services.