Republicans are beginning to remind me of Eeyore. But less cute. Seriously. Are they capable of seeing the good side in anything!?

Republicans are (yet again) warning against consumer protection. This time their focus is on the Consumer Federal Protection Agency, or CFPA, an organization that does not even yet exist. The goal of the CFPA would be to protect consumers from unfair business practices – oh the horror!

Republican Senator Robert Bennet of Utah is worried an independant agency would have too much authority and regulate too much at the expense of businesses and the economy. Now this is opposed to the system we have now for banks which is barely regulated at all at the expense of the consumer. But hey, look how great our economy is right now! So that makes it all better, right?

To be fair, some Republicans would support a CFPA that was subservient to a larger oversight organization that could modify or eliminate any regulations that were deemed harmful to business. Who want so to guess who might serve on that organization? My bet? At least a few of those chairs would have bankers on them.

The entire point of the CFPA is to have individuals who are removed from any conflict of interest in the banking industry who can look at our current situation and see how to make it better. See how to make it more fair. Because, as child like as it sounds, it is not fair right now.

Now, I am not one of those ‘blame the bank, not me’ folks. No. If you have heavy debt and a high interest rate, it is your fault. You took out the loan. You used the credit card. I’m no saint, I have debt. I have substantial student loan debt and some old accounts that need to be paid off. But let’s look at one of my old credit cards for instance.

I had a credit account with MBNA when I was 18. It was a small limit, and I went through it fast. I made just the minimum payment every month but I was never late and never missed a due date. I finally got my balance paid in half and all of a sudden my credit limit was slashed to just above my balance and my interest rates and minimum payment were doubled.

Now. I had done nothing to deserve this. For over a year I had paid diligently. I had used other credit responsibly. Here is what I don’t like. I didn’t have a variable interest rate on that card – it was fixed. So when I bought those things, I agreed to the rates then for those items. I didn’t agree to an interest rate of twice that amount. So how was it fair to make me pay it? And yes, I did close the account and no, they still did not allow me to keep my old interest rate. What would have taken another year to pay off ended up taking me three years.

That is the kind of situation that ought to be prevented. Add to that predatory lending practices, ChexSystems (which is a ridiculous system that I will get into on a later date), and arbitrarily denying limit increases or interest rate reductions for reasons like “your shopping location habits are risky” (WTF!?) and we have one industry that sorely needs to see some independent regulation. They clearly cannot, or will not, do it themselves.