A few weeks ago, I warned that one of the problems with the Administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is that it could easily be captured by interest groups who would use its powers to exploit the general public for their own benefit:
[Voter] political ignorance opens the door to interest group “capture” of the CFPA or other agencies that will implement paternalistic regulations. Such regulations will necessarily be complex and difficult to understand. Rationally ignorant voters are unlikely to follow them closely enough to be able to tell the difference between effective regulations and harmful ones. As a result, it will be easy for interest groups and government officials to enact regulations that benefit politically influential businesses as the expense of the public under the guise of consumer protection. We have seen this pattern time and again with other regulatory agencies, such as those engaged in railroad, airline, public utility, and trucking regulation.There is no reason to believe that the new paternalistic regulatory agencies will be any different. Indeed, agencies implement paternalistic financial regulations are likely to be even more vulnerable to capture because of the complexity of the financial system (which makes political monitoring by ignorant voters even more difficult), and the presence of numerous powerful interest groups who have an incentive to do the capturing. Banks, credit card companies, real estate developers, and many others will no doubt lobby hard to capture the CFPA once it gets established.
Recently, Democratic Representative Maxine Waters added an amendment to the bill establishing the CFPA that would add five seats to its powerful Oversight Board for “experts in the fields of consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgage loans.” All sorts of interest group representatives could easily get on the board under this amendment. For example, pretty much any bank or credit card company official could claim to have expertise in the “fields” of “consumer protection” or “fair lending.” Similarly, many banks can easily claim to “primarily serve underserved communities.” Finally, interest group representatives could pose as “representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgage loans.” For example, lenders and real estate developers located in such areas would surely qualify; after all, they live in the community too. The majority of the board will still be made up of various federal government officials. But these officials are far from immune from interest group pressure themselves, and of course such lobbying will be facilitated by the fact that several interest group representatives will likely be sitting on the board itself.
Conservative columnist Byron York, author of the linked article, focuses mostly on the fact that Waters’ amendment cleverly forestalled a Republican effort to keep ACORN from getting representatives on the board. ACORN, however, is just one of many groups that could potentially get seats on the Oversight Board. Indeed, ACORN’s notoriety makes it less dangerous than many of the other groups that could potentially capture the CFPA. Any effort to put ACORN representatives on the board would likely result in lots of negative publicity; for that reason, I doubt that the administration would let it happen. On the other hand, rationally ignorant voters are likely to overlook the presence of representatives from other, equally pernicious but less well-known groups.