Financial Reform Law Aims to Change Some Ways of Wall Street

22 July 2010

President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. To his left are bill sponsors Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank.

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

On Wednesday, President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

BARACK OBAMA: "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history -- in history."

Together, the changes represent the biggest rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression. At the heart of the two thousand three hundred pages in the bill are promises to protect average Americans.

Congress agreed to create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the Federal Reserve will pay for it. The central bank will budget about five hundred million dollars a year.

Travis Plunkett is legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer rights group. He says this new independent office will have a lot of responsibility -- and that is a good thing.

TRAVIS PLUNKETT: "We're going to have one federal consumer financial protection bureau. If it succeeds, people will know it. If it fails, people will know it. And they will try to hold it accountable."

The bureau will set rules for the marketplace and enforce existing laws. One goal is to keep home buyers from getting bigger loans than they can pay for. But two areas where the bureau will not have power is over auto lenders or banks with assets of less than ten billion dollars.