"In this period of painfully partisan politics, it's too easy for the focus to be on who won today, instead of the American people's needs. We're witnessing just that in two roiling debates--one over the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), another over the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. [...]

The new CFPA's sole mandate would be to shield consumers from deceptive and dangerous financial products and practices. It would have the authority to not only write rules to better protect consumers, but also to enforce them. [...]

The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in January granted unabated financing of campaign communications by corporations, equating political spending with the right to freedom of speech, as listed in the First Amendment.

The...ruling will only make efforts to re-regulate the financial industry more difficult in the years to come, so long as financial institutions have the ability to amplify their "voices" by simply writing a larger check. [...]"

Read the full op-ed by Mazher Ali on CommonDreams.org.