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The TV ad shows a man getting out of bed in the dark of night,
sleepless and clearly troubled. What has him so worried? Congress is
working on a bill that would hurt small businesses by drying up the
credit available to them, the narrator explains.
The ad is an opening salvo in a campaign the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched to derail a regulatory overhaul by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank,
D-Mass. The sweeping legislation, a response to last year's financial
crisis, is widely expected to pass the full House this week. But the Chamber of Commerce hopes to stall it next year in the Senate.
While
the Chamber of Commerce takes several shots at the bill, it focuses in
particular on the small business angle. The bill creates a Consumer
Financial Protection Agency, or CFPA, stripping existing authority from
the Federal Reserve
and other regulators. The aim is to rein in abusive lending practices,
but the chamber says it's more likely to overreach and hurt mom-and-pop
stores.
"Faced with the risk of being second-guessed and litigated against, what we see are financial institutions
diminishing the kinds of products they are making available. We think
that will constrain the credit that is available to small business,"
said David Hirschmann, president of the chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.
Steve
Adamske, spokesman for Frank's committee, called that argument a smoke
screen. The Chamber of Commerce really wants to stop the bill's
regulations on big banks, he says.
"They are a
bunch of right-wing hacks who are inventing anything to scare people
into voting against this bill. They should be given no credence,"
Adamske said. Read the rest at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20091210/bs_ibd_ibd/20091209general
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