Sometime next week, President Obama will finally sign a financial reform bill. Plenty of banks will have to deal with messy new rules, but one big winner in the “spare me from further regulation” sweepstakes was auto dealers.

Mr. Obama wanted the new consumer financial protection agency to oversee dealers and the loans they arrange for consumers. So did many consumer groups and military organizations, because crooked dealers have taken advantage of many young soldiers.

But the dealers prevailed, winning exemption from oversight by the new agency, in part through the efforts of Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. Mr. Brownback said in a May statement on his Web site that “auto dealers are a part of Main Street, not Wall Street.” That makes sense as long as you ignore that Wall Street firms bundle into bonds many of the loans that dealers help originate and conveniently forget that lots of dealers are actually owned by publicly traded companies.

Mr. Brownback also noted that “more than 90 percent of auto loans are financed not through the dealer, but through an outside financial institution.” In fact, people apply for their car loans at an auto dealer about 80 percent of the time, according to J. D. Power & Associates.  

Read more at: New York Times

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{Photography by Alden Jewell}