This is the GOP's preferred sport
Ever since Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground in 2010, Republicans have been trying to shut it down. GOPers drafted legislation to weaken the fledgling agency, which was designed to prevent mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other financial institutions from screwing average Americans. The measures died. Republicans turned to the courts to gut the bureau. That effort failed. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they have another weapon at their disposal: new subpoena powers they can deploy to blitz the CFPB with document requests.
Now what is the Average American?
Revenue
The median household income in the US is $50,502.
The average US income is a less useful measure because it is skewed by high income households and mega income earners. According to Social Security tax records for 2011 you have 93 Americans making more than $50,000,000 with average earnings of $79,000,000+. Clearly this pushes the average much higher and that is why you see the average household income at $69,821.
Debt
Mary is 37, the current median age of an American. She’s a non-Hispanic White, the largest demographic in the country, and she works in retail sales, the most common occupation in the United States,”
Average credit card debt among indebted households: $15,263
Average credit card interest rate: 14.95% APR
Average mortgage debt: $147,591
Average outstanding student loan balance: $31,646
Average auto loan debt: $30,738
Only 59 percent of Americans have at least $500 in a savings account saved
So say you are average
Total revenue $50,502
Total average debt: $225, 238
So you are nearly 4.5 times your revenue in debt [without accounting for interest]
If you are lucky enough to have savings you can earn a stunning
Throughout the entire industry, however, the national average savings interest rate is only 0.17%.
Yes it is obvious, the last thing the average American needs is protection from being screwed.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Yours snickeringly
The Republican Party.
6:21 AM PT: If you use this calculator
http://www.calculator.net/...
With the $50.500 income you can borrow up to 4.5 time your annual revenue over 30 years and still maintain a reasonable debt to earnings ratio [28 t0 36%] according to the banks
6:45 AM PT: For the debt to earnings ratio
http://budgeting.thenest.com/...
Debt to Income
The total debt-to-income ratio tracks how much money a household owes relative to its total income. When you're relatively young, it's normal to have a high ratio -- sometimes running well over 200 percent when you buy your first house. However, as you age, your ratio should come down as your income goes up and you gradually pay your debts down. Retiring with a debt-to-income ratio of zero means that you don't have to spend any of your savings to pay debt. Along the way to retirement, keeping your debts as low as reasonably possible isn't just good on paper. It also means that you get to keep more of every paycheck and either spend it on things that make you happy or save it. For a 20-year period from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, debt levels were around 60 percent to 70 percent of household income. After that point, they started to climb rapidly. At the peak in 2007, the average household owed 130.2 percent of its income, although it fell back down to 114.3 percent by mid-2011. The declining trend has continued, but as of September 2013 debt levels are still nowhere 60 percent to 70 percent.