Warren Buffet is now the enemy.
Via Hufpo
House Republicans are set to deliver a major favor to Warren Buffett next week, days after a devastating expose detailed consumer abuses in his corporate empire. And many Democrats seem willing to help the world’s third-richest person extract additional profit from the poor.
Buffett is the most dominant player in the mobile home business. As chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, he controls Clayton Homes, the largest U.S. mobile home manufacturer, as well as the two biggest mobile home lenders — 21st Mortgage Corp. and Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance. Last week, The Seattle Times and The Center For Public Integrity reported that Buffett’s empire relies on predatory practices that trick and trap borrowers into taking on doomed, expensive loans.[…]
The subprime housing loan saga ended in a systemic calamity for the global economy. In response, Congress packed stronger consumer protections into the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
The deregulation bill that House Republicans and some Democratic allies will push through next week almost certainly won’t result in a systemic crash. But by eliminating protections for many high-cost mobile home loans, it will help protect Buffett and other mobile home lenders from federal penalties if they take advantage of poor borrowers.
“Why would we allow the government to say we’re going to give the industry legal immunity for the highest-cost loans on the market that are going to the people who can least afford it?” asked Gary Kalman, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending.
Key Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee said they’re concerned, although they did not single out Buffett or Clayton.
“There is a long, painful history of some manufactured homeowners facing a broken and predatory financing system,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told HuffPost. “Instead of building wealth, manufactured homeowners see their wealth stripped away through poor-quality loans with high fees and interest rates. If there are problems with the market, the manufactured housing industry should provide public evidence that supports their argument that it should be easier to charge manufactured homebuyers more for a loan.”[…]
Nevertheless, 10 Democrats on the Financial Services Committee voted in favor of the bill during a markup hearing in late March: Reps. Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), William Lacy Clay (Mo.), David Scott (Ga.), John Carney (Del.), Terri Sewell (Ala.), Patrick Murphy (Fla.), John Delaney (Md.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joyce Beatty (Ohio). All of the panel’s Republicans supported the measure.