“A
Fighting Chance” by U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is a must read for everyone.
The
first time I heard of Elizabeth Warren was through a documentary called “Maxed
Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders.” We used to show
the documentary to the students at Benedictine University as part of a
financial literacy class but it was so disturbing that we had to stop. The
students just couldn’t take it. Part of the documentary followed the lives of
people who became so hopeless over their financial setbacks that they took
their own lives.
One of the many things that I have come to love about Elizabeth Warren is that she’s all about action.
She didn’t just talk about what was going wrong in the world of money, she did
something about it. And it was monumental. Elizabeth Warren was able to accomplish
the unthinkable act of creating an agency dedicated to protecting consumers
from deceptive lending practices. I was lucky enough to be chosen to spend two
days in Washington, DC alongside other financial literacy advocates to help the
new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau establish national priorities in the
area of financial education. One gentleman spoke up during the series of meetings
and said something that I’ll never forget. “We can teach
our children to swim but what difference does it make if we throw them into a
pool of sharks?” So true.
So
the job of the CFPB is to clear the pool of sharks…and the job of the financial
literacy/capability/empowerment world is to teach consumers to swim. Millions of Americans will have a fighting chance to become financially secure thanks to the work of Senator Warren and everyone who made the CFPB a reality. Great job!
