Free Republic

Remember Obama phones? Now it's Obama loans. The Obama administration is trying to muscle in on the small-dollar loan market, in part by muscling out the online lending industry. It is ordering banks to go against the advice of their regulators and step up small-dollar lending to economically disadvantaged customers. It's toying with the idea of offering banking services, including consumer loans, through the Postal Service. And this week we learned the Treasury Department is asking for $10 million to provide small loans to people with questionable credit through community development organizations. It's ACORN going into the payday loan business....

We know the pattern by now. A crisis arises. As my Competitive Enterprise Institute colleague Chris Horner puts it, this administration says, “There’s no time to waste, we must do something now, sign here, details to follow.” And every time, we discover that we have signed up for more than we bargained for. That was the case with the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 supposedly to solve the problems that caused the financial crisis. Only now are we seeing the details to follow. They amount to a government takeover of the financial industry and increased government control over our behavior,...

Interesting story here... CourtHouseNews (via Denninger): A La Jolla man can keep his home for now, after a federal judge granted his motion for a temporary restraining order blocking Washington Mutual and JP Morgan from foreclosing on his house because the banks misled him into defaulting on his mortgage. Kaveh Khast claimed the banks instructed him to stop making his mortgage payments so he could qualify for a loan modification. A Washington Mutual representative confirmed receipt of the documents, but did not contact Khast within two months as promised. After learning JP Morgan Chase had acquired Washington Mutual, Khast contacted...