BANKERS FEAR CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

By Nathaniel Luce

Publication: THE TENNESSEAN

A major piece of  financial reform headed for a U.S. Senate vote as early as April includes a provision that has survived significant banking opposition for nearly a year: the creation of a consumer financial protection bureau.

LUKE FROEB, a Vanderbilt University professor and a director at the Federal Trade Commission under President George W. Bush, disagrees.

“If you create a new agency without an institutional memory, you’ll get these bright-eyed college graduates who want to save the world, and you will do more damage than good,” Froeb said. “They don’t know what they don’t know.”