Grant will increase financial literacy for youth
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Staff Report - Published: July 10, 2009
BURLINGTON — Calling for creation of a new Financial Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from abusive leaders, Vermont's independent Sen. Bernard Sanders recently announced a $130,000 federal grant to boost financial literacy for young Vermonters.
Joining Sanders at a recent press conference, Joseph G. Bergeron, president of the Association of Vermont Credit Unions, said the group will work with local business leaders and others to teach middle and high school students about financial literacy.
The financial crisis has brought home the need to educate young people about making sound financial decisions later in life, Sanders said.
"It is critical that we teach kids how to balance a checkbook, save money, qualify for a mortgage and understand that if they take out a loan there is no such thing as free and easy money," Sanders said.
In the meantime, the Obama administration sent a proposal to Congress that would establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to guard against lending practices like those that contributed to the financial crisis, Sanders said.
Joining Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sanders is a co-sponsor of legislation that would create the commission. The federal government must protect consumers from deceitful lenders, Sanders said. Advanced degrees are not needed to understand the terms of a mortgage or credit card, he said.
Sanders also has a proposal to reform the financial services industry, including a probe into the crisis to find out what happened during the crisis and what can be done to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
He also would like a national usury law that would cap credit-card interest rates and fees and has proposed breaking up big banks, like Bank of America and insurance companies like AIG to avoid future potential bailouts.
"If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said.
Mounting evidence shows a recent run-up in oil and gas prices has little to do with supply and demand and everything to do with excessive speculation by some of the same Wall Street firms that received the largest taxpayer bail-out in the history of the world, Sanders said.
In the past decade, the banking and insurance industries spent more than $5 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying activities, Sanders said. They are spending more currently to try to stop Congress from enacting reform, he said. "(It's) time that Congress stood up to these big financial interests and for the average American," Sanders said.
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