In this morning's weekly address, President Obama highlighted indications of an improving U.S. economy, Five million jobs added, a falling unemployment rate, and his Wall Street reform legislation and gave a glimpse of what is a slowly, but very steadily, brightening financial future for middle-class Americans.
He also lauded the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which beginning next month will offer a new service to ensure that Americans will have a fair shake and can access, and correct their credit scores that are vital in many areas of personal finance.
The companies that put your credit score together can make mistakes. They may think you had a loan or a credit card that was never yours. They may think you were late making payments when you were on time. And when they mess up, you’re the one who suffers.
Until this week, if you had a complaint, you took it to the company. Sometimes they listened. Sometimes they didn’t. But that was pretty much it. They were your only real hope.
Not anymore. If you have a complaint about your credit score that hasn’t been properly addressed, you can go to consumerfinance.gov/complaint and let the consumer watchdog know.
Not only will they bring your complaint directly to the company in question, they’ll give you a tracking number, so you can check back and see exactly what’s being done on your behalf.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he explained, has also scored major victories recently, forcing credit card companies to settle with Americans for $400 million.
But, as always, reforms that benefit everyday citizens over banks, share a common enemy, the Republican party.
That’s what Wall Street reform is all about – looking out for working families and making sure that everyone is playing by the same rules.
Sadly, that hasn’t been enough to stop Republicans in Congress from fighting these reforms. Backed by an army of financial industry lobbyists, they’ve been waging an all-out battle to delay, defund and dismantle these new rules.
I refuse to let that happen.
President Obama vowed to fight a return to the "era of top-down, on-your-own economics." We've come too far for that, he said, and sacrificed too much.
A full transcript of the President's weekly address is available here.
