politics in washington could push america over a fiscal cliff and quite possibly into a recession if congress doesn t act. economists now say that the so-called fiscal cliff has now overtaken europe as the biggest threat to the u.s. economy. in other words, our homegrown storm has a bigger chance of causing a hurricane here than the actual hurricane that s blowing our way from europe. now i ve been bee rat berating on this show to head off a series of tax increases and spending cuts mandated to take effect on january 1st. congress couldn t come up with a better deal to raise the nation s debt limit last year. i am not alone in my calls. the federal reserve chairman and the international monetary fund are warning congress to act before it s too late. if you get hit by another recession, you ll join me in pointing my finger directly at the political partisanship that is poisoned your path to economic stability and prosperity. now if i were a politician, i would not want to be p
so the question in front of us was you want to go the confirmation route, a year from now maybe you get a chance to make the case. i think it is such a sad commentary about the united states senate that investment banker from wall street after investment banker from wall street gets confirmed without hesitation and the one person in america who stood up for the middle class, who was screaming for years saying there s unfairness, it s leading to a disaster, can t get confirmed. but let s put that aside. what is your agenda? give us issues one, two, and three because you re about to get to work. what are we going to see that the middle class will say a-ha, this will change my life? what i really want to see are credit products. right? which is what they really are. in many ways they are. like toasters or refrigerators. these things that people buy like credit cards and mortgages. i want to see them short and readable. so that a consumer can say i can see how much that costs and i can
make the case. i think it is such a sad commentary about the united states senate that investment banker from wall street after investment banker from wall street gets confirmed without hesitation and the one person in america who stood up for the middle class, who was screaming for years saying there s unfairness, it s leading to a disaster, can t get confirmed. but let s put that aside. what is your agenda? give us issues one, two, and three because you re about to get to work. what are we going to see that the middle class will say a-ha, this will change my life? what i really want to see are credit products. right? which is what they really are. in many ways they are. like toasters or refrigerators. these things that people buy like credit cards and mortgages. i want to see them short and readable. so that a consumer can say i can see how much that costs and i can see what kind of risk comes with it and here s the key part, i can compare this one to that one to that one to that
know break it down for people at home who say i sure do like that nice person from oklahoma. break down what you re doing. so there s this new consumer agency, and it s been signed into law. the president, very committed to this. we had a conversation about it. how do you get it started. there were two ways to go. go with nomination and a long period of time where i can t work on it if i m nominated. let s get out of the weeds. how does it protect consumers? what it s really about is fixing broken markets. right now we have markets for credit products that just don t work like markets for toasters or markets for cars or markets for other products. here is how they re different. if you want to compare credit cards right now. you put four credit cards in front of you, you can t tell i ve got this credit card. i have absolutely no idea what
cfpb as important not just in terms of fairness but for the overall health of the economy? oh, absolutely in multiple ways. so let s just talk about a couple. the first one is, whatever is the right metaphor you want to use, when you think about families out there, their own boats trying to make it, trying to make it from here to there, what credit has become is a big hole in the bottom of the boat. the tricks, the traps, the ways that money is drained out. and what this agency has the capacity to do is to begin to patch that up so that families have more money. and when they have more money, they re more stable. they re likely to take on obligations that they re really going to be able to pay back. that s more money in their hands, more money for haircuts, more money to buy goods, more money to buy services, more money in the economy and more money in the stability. it also means that the idea of trading in those credit products, those mortgages we all