Consumer Financial Protection Act

The Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 was a provision added to the National Bank Act, designed to clarify regulations of what financial institutions can and cannot do to their customers.

Like all Acts of Congress, the Consumer Financial Protection Act is highly vague and will require ambiguous language to be added to it once banks discover the loopholes created by this law.

Also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, the law was signed into law by President Barack Obama in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Legislation was crafted in a hurry, and barely anyone had time to read it in the two days that it was available to Congressional members and to the public before it was passed.

The Act also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a centralized agency designed to regulate financial products and services offered by banking institutions. Unsurprisingly, this toothless bureau failed to recognize outright fraud by Wells Fargo, despite hundreds of customer complaints about the bank opening fake accounts under their names. That scandal has been central to the argument that Washington is still beholden to large banks, while making competition more difficult for community and regional banks.