The newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally has a leader, and the progressives of the Democratic Party,

which have never seen a new federal agency they didn't like, are cheering like they haven't since "affordable housing" fell out of vogue last decade. For these people, the stated goal of any federal agency may be enough to secure their blessing (it's supposed to protect consumers against financial predation, who could be against that?), but others of us live in the real world and recognize that in Washington, the truth is rarely what it seems. For one, the entirety of the Dodd-Frank bill which creates the CFPB fails to address any and all of the root causes of the financial crisis. It certainly has no effect on the Federal Reserve, whose artificial creation of money and credit throughout the decade fueled a bubble in the housing market that was destined to pop. There is a similar dearth of action regarding the continued existence of GSEs such as Freddie or Fannie, whose exclusive lines of credit at the Treasury and government grade credit ratings allowed them to amass piles of worthless mortgages whilst securing the blessing of government as it promoted politically popular social goals. Nor does it address any issues concerning government-created incentives for personal and company use of debt financing over alternative sources. That being said, the Obama administration's tireless line that Dodd-Frank and the CFPB is a necessary response to the financial crisis is as untrue as it is absurd. They would have you believe that opponents of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are simply defenders of corporations and Wall Street who don't want their cronies being held liable when they swindle their customers and wreck the economy. But this couldn't be further from the truth. This new agency will do nothing but further entrench large financial interests and insulate them from small and decentralized competition. The regulations created by the CFPB and its Dodd-Frank sister agencies will largely impose fixed costs on affected businesses, which increase economies of scale in finance and elsewhere, further driving out the little guy whose per-unit costs are prohibitively high. In this way, the newly-created bureau will only do further harm to small and independent businesses. As University of Houston professor Dr. Craig Pirrong stated in October, such policies "favor the big over the small, and encourage the big to get bigger and the small to go away." Despite the fact that it parades itself as a protector of the consumer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is nothing of the sort. The average citizen will be no more protected than they were before the bureau was created, and they will now have to pay for a new parasitic bureaucracy that will never be eliminated and whose budget will probably increase when it fails to do its job. The federal government already has 22 administrations, 9 agencies, 13 boards, 12 bureaus, 5 councils, and 23 commissions. What on earth has convinced us that adding one more, and paying for it with borrowed money as the national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, is both necessary and wise? We cannot afford to continue to be fleeced by the media and politicians in Washington in such a manner. If the last 10 years of American history should have taught us anything, it's that another government bureau will only make our problems worse.