Don LaFontaine was the voice of all of the great movie trailers until he passed away in 2008. Most famously, he’s known for the opening phrase in his deep, booming voice, “In a world….” Some of his work included: “Die Hard,” “The Terminator,” “Beetlejuice,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Rambo,” “The Godfather” – you remember his voice.
As a voiceover guy and to understand how my brain works, I think of LaFontaine’s voice when reading the news when it comes to something potentially tragic for the credit union industry or just bad news in general.
“In a world … where the CFPB is destroyed.” “In a world … as darkness covers regulatory agencies.” “In a world … where bottled water becomes currency.” Yes, this is what I do as I read. It’s like a depressing narration of my life – like “The Wonder Years,” but without hope of my first kiss with Winnie Cooper.
The CFPB has been circling the drain for some months now since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the agency unconstitutional in its current form with a single director, who cannot be fired by the President without cause.
“In a world … where an agency is challenged,” said my brain.
After the ruling last fall, the CFPB was left in a purgatory state to wait for the new administration to get its act together. By all indications, Trump was going to keep the CFPB and have its director, Richard Cordray, answer directly to the President. That seemed about right with the way things have gone so far with Team Trump.
And then my brain went into “In a world…” mode when the news broke that the President’s lawyers filed an amicus brief declaring the CFPB as unconstitutional. The brief stated the following: “Because a single agency head is unchecked by the constraints of group decision-making among members appointed by different Presidents, there is a greater risk that an ‘independent’ agency headed by a single person will engage in extreme departures from the President’s executive policy.”
Ah, now this makes more sense. This move is about having direct political control of an independent agency. Thus, making it not independent, but another agency answerable to the leader of the country.
“In a world … where regulation disappears.”
Regulations can suck, I get it. Regulations can be a gigantic pain in a credit union’s backside. Regulations cost money to implement and to remain in continued compliance.
According to the National Association of Manufacturers, for instance, the price of regulations is pretty steep. In their most recent regulatory report, the total cost of federal regulations in 2014 was $2.028 trillion. When you break down that number, the average cost per firm to stay compliant with regulations was $233,182.
Wow, now that’s a lot of money that they could have used to build their infrastructure, hand out bonuses to employees – I’m kidding, they wouldn’t do that.
“In a world … when we went back in time and our life expectancy was pretty short.”
According to our nation’s history, without those regulations, we’d be back in the time of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The days when employers could have you work as many hours as they wanted until we collapsed, just to be replaced by an 11-year-old. The days when we might have real human body parts in hot dogs again. When, like in the 1970s, rivers would finally catch fire again, just like nature intended – I’m looking at you Cuyahoga! The time when bankers and financial institutions could bring our country and the world back to the edge of collapsing. I miss those days of being laid off and drinking lemonade on the front porch as I weighed options of buying food or paying the electric bill.
Like I said and like you know, regulations can be a gigantic pain to deal with. And they do serve a purpose.
“In a world … where we’re overcorrecting.”
Rolling back regulations is a great idea for saving time and money for organizations. But going too far can be a disaster for our communities, our members and our environment. Dodd-Frank, I believe, was a good idea that probably went too far. But completely pulling the plug on that, on the independent agencies, on the idea of keeping our financial institutions, manufacturing, city drinking water, and the oil and coal industries in some kind of check is even more dangerous to our future.
Can we have a world where we come up with a compromise? Let’s face it, if left alone, like when your parents go away for the weekend – we can’t be trusted to do the right thing all the time. We might eat the whole bag of Doritos and sneak some booze from the liquor cabinet. We’re human and we screw up. When it comes to our money, our members and our environment, we cannot afford to screw up.
I believe our world would be better served with a good measure of regulation that is overseen by an independent group. The CFPB should be a panel of non-partisan people whose job is to be the sheriff(s) of our industry and hold us accountable. One person running the show is a silly thing. And that was a mistake that can be easily corrected. Of course, what seemed easy a few months ago could be impacted by one tweet. It’s time to fix our regulation system, but not to the detriment of our members and our country.
“In a world…”
Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.
