Senate Financial Regulation Bill Snoops on You

The Senate voted 59-39 on Thursday to pass a financial regulation bill, which was claimed to be aimed at Wall Street. The bill now goes to a conference committee in the House of Representatives, where differences between the House and Senate versions will be ironed out.

The bill creates the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empowers it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account. Senator Shelby has warned Americans that the purpose of this is for Big Brother to watch over us to try to change our behavior and choices in using our money.  It appears that the Democrats' viewpoint is that Americans are incompetent to choose their own foods and incompetent to spend their own money.  Just as they would proscribe our eating sugar, saturated fats, and fast foods generally, they want to be in a position to limit any spending we may do that they do not like.

No doubt, they are also eager to have this information so they will have a better handle on who is operating in the black market or has largely cash income which is not being reported on income taxes.  By tracking everything someone is spending their money on which goes through their bank accounts, the feds can then figure out which likely spending is not being revealed in those transactions.  This will allow them to discover the likely candidates living in a substantially cash economy with unreported income.  For instance, suppose someone is buying all of their groceries with undeclared cash, because they are neither withdrawing enough money from the ATM for cash purchases of their groceries nor using a credit card or debit card to do so.

Big Brother is growing constantly more watchful.