The PBS News Hour today asks, "Do We Need a Consumer Protection Agency?" Amanda Engstrom, the senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, posted her response. Some excerpts:

As we struggle to get the economy moving again, we must ensure that our efforts to fix the financial system help protect consumers and investors and do not actually make things worse. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what will happen if Congress approves legislation creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Specifically, there are four major problems with this legislation.

First, the CFPA is not limited to, nor even targeted at, credit cards and mortgages. The CFPA would have power over businesses that are non-financial in nature and that have, at best, a tangential relationship to consumer finance....

Second, the CFPA doesn't consolidate regulations — in fact, most of the businesses referenced above are already regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which will retain its authority.

Third, the CFPA sets the floor for consumer protection laws — allowing the 50 states to pass their own laws that may conflict with the CFPA and with each other....

Lastly, the CFPA would have very broad and vague regulatory authority to limit or prohibit products that are "abusive," but no one knows what that means....

We need better ways to protect consumers. The CFPA, however, would do a great deal of economic harm to consumers and to our economy without ensuring new protections or solving legitimate shortcomings in our financial system. Congress and the administration should go back to the drawing board.

Read Engstrom's full post, and other responses, at the PBS News Hour Web site.